Whether you want to admit it or not, your body contains an abundance of adipose fat tissue cells. Fat has been at the epicenter of cosmetic and dietary treatments for those not confident in how they look and feel. Billions of dollars each year are spent by consumers each year in effort to lose weight and burn off excess fat either by exercise, dieting, and even cosmetic procedures to surgically remove unwanted tissue. However, in recent years physicians have begun to harvest fat for both medical and cosmetic purposes, potentially changing the way we view the potential of our own fat.
Adipose tissue cells are an abundant source of loose connective tissue within the human body and as discussed in anatomy, are derived from mesenchymal stem cells with the ability to differentiate into many different cell types. Undergoing a small liposuction procedure, adipose tissue cells can be separated either mechanically through washes and/or centrifugation or degraded enzymatically into stromal vascular fraction (SVF), the collective term for the heterogeneous composition of various blood cells, vascular endothelial progenitor cells (used to build and repair vessels) and adipose-derived stem cells (ADSc) (Lockhart et. al 2015). Once SVF containing ADSc is obtained, it can then be autologously grafted into areas of need.
Clinically, adipose-derived stem cells have been seen to improve hair growth in individuals with early androgenetic alopecia, the most common condition of hair loss in both males and females, consisting of patterned baldness before the age of 30. In a 2020 study, it was found that subcutaneous injections of adipose-derived stem cells significantly increased terminal hair count starting after 6 weeks and maintaining past 52 weeks post operatively (Kuka et al., 2020). Additionally, adipose-derived stem cells have been used to aid in soft tissue augmentation procedures due to their regenerative properties on surrounding tissues (Landau et al., 2018). As a result, procedures using ADSc result in limited injection site scarring and reduce the possibility of complications as there is no foreign material implanted during the procedure. Landau and colleagues also demonstrated the use of ADSc in wound care through its ability to reduce scarring and hyperpigmentation, increase local vascularity, and improve tissue post radiation.
So next time you start to feel self conscious or grossed out by fat, think of all the good it can be used for… once it is sucked out of your body of course.
References
Kuka, G., Epstein, J., Aronowitz, J., Glasgold, M. J., Rogal, J. G., Brown, W., ... & Washenik, K. (2020). Cell enriched autologous fat grafts to follicular niche improves hair regrowth in early androgenetic alopecia. Aesthetic surgery journal, 40(6), NP328-NP339.
Landau, M. J., Birnbaum, Z. E., Kurtz, L. G., & Aronowitz, J. A. (2018). proposed methods to improve the survival of adipose tissue in autologous fat grafting. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open, 6(8).
Lockhart, R. A., Hakakian, C. S., & Aronowitz, J. A. (2015). Tissue dissociation enzymes for adipose stromal vascular fraction cell isolation: a review. J Stem Cell Res Ther, 5(8), 12.
Wow Austin! This blew my mind; I cannot believe adipose tissue can do this! Truly fascinating. As I was reading this, I did come up with a few questions. You mention hair growth, and you play around with the idea of changing how you look if you’re not happy with the amount of adipose tissue you have, etc. Do you think adipose derived stem cells will affect people socially/culturally? This gives people another way to alter their looks (like plastic surgery), and does so without the need for a gym or whatnot. Would this be, maybe, rather damaging, socially? Would this grant people a way to become more “skinny,” thus generating a social norm around cutting off all of your adipose tissue? I think it could be possible, since social media can be rather toxic and exploit procedures. After reading up on this topic after reading your post, I also found that adipose derived stem cells have a more clinical use, and have proven their regenerative potential in several clinical studies, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus, liver cirrhosis, ischemic injuries, rheumatoid arthritis, GvHD, Crohn’s disease, SLE, and multiple sclerosis (Al-Gadban et al. 2020), as stated by the journal “Adipose Tissue-Derived Stem Cells: Immunomodulatory Effects and Therapeutic Potential.” It was also said that although these stem cells are proving to be highly promising to work with, certain studies have shown that obese ASCs increased the proliferation and tumorigenicity of breast cancer cells in vitro and in vivo through an estrogen-mediated leptin pathway, which may increase the potential of tumor development (Al-Gadban et al. 2020). Do you think that this could be the beginning of a new era of medicine? Or is it/could it be too risky with the possibility of developing a tumor later? There is always a catch, right?!
ReplyDeleteReference:
Al-Ghadban, Sara, and Bruce A. Bunnell. “Adipose Tissue-Derived Stem Cells: Immunomodulatory Effects and Therapeutic Potential.” Physiology, vol. 35, no. 2, 2020, pp. 125–133., https://doi.org/10.1152/physiol.00021.2019.
Hi Kinsey, I definitely think that the use of adipose-derived stem cells (ADSc) could usher in a new era of medicine. However, at this point in time ADSc are still an investigational new drug (IND) in the eyes of the FDA, and new drugs can take years to gain approval despite promising initial clinical trials. That being said, if they are approved I do believe adipose-derived stem cells can have a huge social/cultural impact within the next few years, however not for its uses in plastic surgery but more for their regenerative potential as you mentioned from Al-Gadben et al. 2020.
ReplyDeleteOver the past year I actually worked with Dr. Aronowitz who published two of the references, and aided with several procedures using adipose-derived stem cells. Being a plastic surgeon, he primarily used ADSc when performing either enhanced breast reconstruction or augmentation procedures. These procedures cost an obscene amount of money, adding a minimum of $5000 per grafting site to the already high cost of plastic surgery, which provides a huge monetary burden. In an era where so much money is spent on trying to be “skinny”, I do not think ADSc will have a direct impact on an increase in the amount of people who want to eliminate as much adipose tissue as possible. At its core, ADSc in plastic surgery is an extension to common autologous fat grafting procedures where instead of administering lipoaspirate directly into the grafting site, lipoaspirate with filtered ADSc are administered. In doing so, there is a limit to the amount of fat that can be liposuctioned and processed, typically 500mL (Aronowitz et al., 2018). Therefore, I do not think ADSc will have an immediate social/cultural impact specifically in the common desire to be “skinny”, but much more for the aforementioned regenerative properties in other areas of medicine.
Aronowitz, J. A., Lockhart, R. A., & Hakakian, C. S. (2018). A method for isolation of stromal vascular fraction cells in a clinically relevant time frame. In Adipose-Derived Stem Cells (pp. 11-19). Humana Press, New York, NY.