Abstract
Adipose cells are an important source of mesenchymal stem cells and are important for direct use in research on lipid metabolism and obesity. In addition to use of primary cultures, there is increasing interest in other sources of larger numbers of cells, using approaches including induced pluripotent stem cell differentiation and viral immortalisation.
Highlights
Adipose cells are an important source of mesenchymal stem cells and are important for direct use in research on lipid metabolism and obesity
Adipose cells are an important resource for biomedical research, partly because of the ready availability of human surgical material and the fact that they can be used to generate mesenchymal stem cells [2] – which themselves have interesting differentiation potential, for example towards a hepatocyte phenotype [3] – and even pluripotent stem cells [4]
Balducci and colleagues report diversity in differentiation potential between cell lines immortalised with different gene combinations, which is in itself an interesting observation, but it is not entirely clear what the cellular or molecular basis for this may be or whether it is a purely random observation [1]
Summary
Adipose cells are an important source of mesenchymal stem cells and are important for direct use in research on lipid metabolism and obesity. Adipose cells are an important resource for biomedical research, partly because of the ready availability of human surgical material and the fact that they can be used to generate mesenchymal stem cells [2] – which themselves have interesting differentiation potential, for example towards a hepatocyte phenotype [3] – and even pluripotent stem cells [4].
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