Peripheral nerve injury is a very common disease with varying degrees of clinical severity, but it has a great impact on patients' work efficiency and quality of life. As the first choice of surgical treatment in many cases does not provide satisfactory functional recovery, how to treat peripheral nerve injury has always been a difficult subject in the medical profession at present. In the study of nerve repairing mechanism, it was found that peripheral nerve injury was accompanied by complex regeneration process, including Waller degeneration, axonal sprouting and myelin regeneration. Schwann cells (SCs) are supporting cells of the peripheral nervous system and play an indispensable role in physiological response and regeneration of nerve injury. Limitations of autologous SCs include difficulty in acquisition, often accompanied by certain invasiveness and donor complication, limited proliferative ability and limited sources, which limit their clinical application. With the development of biomedicine, people turn their attention to stem cells. Experiments have found that stem cells are pluripotent cells with self-renewal ability, which is expected to improve the functional recovery after nerve injury. Stem cells can differentiate into SCs-like cells, enhance the neurotrophic effect and promote myelin sheath formation, but do not have the disadvantages of self-SCs, providing a way to improve the existing treatment. According to the source of stem cells, there are bone marrow mesenchyma stem cells, fat mesenchymal stem cells, dental pulp mesenchymal stem cells, nerve stem cells, embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, skin derived cells precursor cells and myogenic stem cells. This review summarizes the recent advances in above mentioned stem cells in peripheral nerve regeneration.
DownLoad: