Surveying the Present Use of Fat-Derived Stem Cells

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One of the more widespread present uses of stem cells in the clinic involves cells derived from a patient's own fat tissue. Here an Indian publication surveys the landscape: "Stem cells offer exciting medical promise for repairing or replacing organs that are diseased, damaged or worn out. This promise of repair and regeneration was taken a step further with the advent of Adipose (Fat) Derived Stem Cells (ADSC) which are derived from our own excess body fat. Much like recycling waste, our excess fat can be processed to give us a better quality of life. Currently used for breast augmentation and reconstruction as well as plastic surgery, ADSC are being researched for most debilitating diseases like Myocardial Infarction (MI), diabetes mellitus and neurodegenerative diseases also. ... Clinically, ADSCs have the advantage over their bone marrow-derived counterparts, because of their abundance in numbers - eliminating the need for culturing over days to obtain a therapeutically viable number - and the ease of the harvest procedure itself - being less painful than the harvest of bone marrow. This, in theory, means that an autologous transplant of ADSC will not only work in much the same way as the successes shown using marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cell transplant, but also be of minimal risk to the patient. ... I was a part of adipose tissue derived stem cell trial in spinal cord injury and critical limb ischemia. We could not have a large number of subjects because of cost considerations, but the results were encouraging in spinal cord injury. However in critical limb ischemia results were poor as compared to good results of other studies with bone marrow derived stem cells ... Apart from these cases, Mumbai based Kasiak Research is using ADSC for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. ... Apart from this, there are a number of trials investigating applications in ischemic heart disease around the world."

Link: http://www.expresshealthcare.in/201105/knowledge01.shtml