The Wnt/beta-catenin pathway is involved in neural stem cell self-renewal and neuronal differentiation. Further understanding of these processes is a prerequisite of cell replacement therapies in neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease. In this context, the role of Wnt/beta-catenin signaling was studied in this thesis which substantiates the presently limited knowledge about neurogenesis in human cell models and shows parallels between the mechanistic knowledge based on rodent models and the use of human neural stem cells for cell replacement strategies in neurodegenerative diseases.
