Fat to endothelium

Aachen, Germany -

The use of adipose tissue for regenerative medicine is particularly exciting since large amounts of autologous stem cells can be procured in this manner with minor discomfort to the patient.

A recent publication (Wosnitza et al. Plasticity of human adipose stem cells to perform adipogenic and endothelial differentiation. Differentiation. 2007 Jan;75(1):12-23) demonstrated that adipose mononuclear cells contain a CD31 positive and CD31 negative fraction. Although classically it is believed that CD31 positive cells are endothelial precursors, this paper demonstrated that both CD31 positive and CD31 negative cells are able to differentiate into endothelium.

Even more interesting was that under certain conditions, the investigators found that endothelial-like cells could differentiate into adipocytes in vitro.

It is critical to understand what the differentiation pathways of adipose derived cells are since these cells are already in clinical trials.