Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have the potential for transdifferentiation into cell types including neuronal cells.Neural-like cells derived from MSCs are also a promising therapeutic modality for repairing ischemic stroke.Evaluating the expression pattern of CXCR4 and investigating its mechanism in MSCs before and after neural differentiation has great importance in evaluating the potential clinical application of these cells in the treatment of neurodegenerative or traumatic diseases of the central nervous system.Chemokines are a large family of small,basic peptides that have mainly been characterized as various cell type chemoattractants.One of the most factors that contributes to cell migration,proliferation,and survival is SDF-1/CXCR4 axis.Stromal cell-derived factor-1 (SDF-1) and its chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) play an important role in regulating MSCs migration,proliferation and differentiation.In this sturdy,after MSCs differentiated to the neural-like cell,CXCR4 expression and its function were examined.We found that CXCR4 expression was increased as MSCs undergo neural differentiation.we found neuronal induction media (NIM) increased P-AKT and neural-like cells migration.The ability of MSCs migration was significantly decreased in the presence of PI3K/AKT inhibitor (LY294002).So,we could conclude that NIM stimulation activated phosphorylation of Akt,which in turn increased and pro-moted migration of MSCs toward SDF-1.These data suggested that the increase of transmigration toward SDF-1 was correlated with PI3K signal pathway.In summary,this study demonstrated that PI3K/AKT activation is involved in increasing CXCR4 expression and promoting neuron-like cells migration in vitro experiment.