Abstract:
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have been used for therapeutic purposes for many years. Multipotent cells in adipose tissue were postulated to exist by Kaplan and colleagues during their investigations into a disease called progressive osseous heteroplasia (POH). In this disease, bone forms in atypical locations, such as in subcutaneous fat or in muscle. Interest in multilineage cells from adipose tissue gained momentum after 2001, when Zuk and her colleagues published their sentinel paper showing differentiation of stromal-type cells from adipose tissue along adipogenic, chondrogenic and osteogenic lineages. Such has been the explosion of interest in the topic, a Medline search with “adipose” and “stem” and “cell” as the key words returns nearly 3,000 articles published since this time, compared with only 300 in the 30 years prior to this. The cells isolated from adipose tissue have been given various names, including adipose stem cells, adipose-derived stem cells, adipose-derived stromal cells, among others. A consensus statement was published following the International Fat Applied Technology Society (IFATS, now known as the International Federation for Adipose Therapeutics and Science) 2nd international meeting in 2004, concluding that they should be referred to as adipose-derived stem/stromal cells (ASC) to promote consistency across research group; hence, this is the terminology used in this article
