Abstract: Diabetic nephropathy is a serious microvascular complication that endangers the health of diabetic patients. It is mainly characterized by microalbuminuria, glomerular basement membrane thickening, extracellular matrix deposition, glomerular hypertrophy and mesangial membrane dilatation. In the development of this disease, bone morphogenetic protein -7 (BMP-7), as a member of the transforming growth factor β (TGF-β) superfamily, plays a variety of biological functions. It is involved in the regulation of renal mesangial cell dilation, podocyte apoptosis, renal tubule injury and renal fibrosis. In this paper, we discussed the mechanism of BMP-7 and TGF- β/Smads signaling pathway, PI3K/Akt signaling pathway and mesenchymal stem cells in diabetic nephropathy, in order to provide reference for the related research.

Key words: bone morphogenetic protein 7, diabetic nephropathies, transforming growth factor beta, Smad proteins,
phosphatidylinositol 3-kinases, proto-oncogene proteins c-akt, mesenchymal stem cells