Education by fat

Suita-shi, Japan -

It is known that adipose tissue contains several interesting stem cell types. Although clinical trials are currently ongoing using adipose derived stem cells, little work is being performed using adipose stem cells to "educate" other types of stem cells. In a recent paper(Yamada Y et al. A novel approach for myocardial regeneration with educated cord blood cells cocultured with cells from brown adipose tissue. Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 2006 Dec 11) it was demonstrated that co-culture of cord blood mononuclear cells with brown fat mononuclear cells endows the cord blood mononuclear cells greater ability to differentiate into cardiomyocytes in vivo, as compared to cord blood mononuclear cells that were co-cultured with control cells.

Of course this paper provides the concept that many other types of stem cell to stem cell interactions may be tried experimentally for overcoming the current barriers to stem cell therapy such as poor in vivo differentiation, function, and limited ability for expansion.