Abstract: Periodontitis is one of the most common diseases in stomatology. It involves periodontal supporting tissues. As the disease progresses, it will cause attachment loss, periodontal pocket formation, alveolar bone resorption, and eventually tooth looseness and loss. Since the alveolar bone damaged and absorbed by periodontitis has very limited selfhealing ability, the goal of periodontitis treatment is to get as much periodontal tissue regeneration as possible on the basis of completely removing the plaque biofilm. Periodontal ligament stem cells are widely studied as the most suitable cells for periodontal tissue regeneration. Wnt signaling pathway can be divided into canonical Wnt pathway and noncanonical Wnt signaling pathway, which are very complex and highly conservative pathways. This pathway is closely related to the osteogenic differentiation of periodontal ligament stem cells which is important for periodontal tissue regeneration. This article reviewed the research status of canonical Wnt signaling pathway and the osteogenic differentiation of periodontal ligament stem cells.

Key words: canonical Wnt signaling pathway, β-catenin, periodontal ligament stem cells, osteogenic differentiation