Chapter 1 - Plastic surgery, fat, and fat plasticity: How adipose tissue changed the landscape of stem cell therapeutics

Abstract

This chapter describes the concurrent events of high intensity growth in the fields of tissue engineering and plastic surgery that enabled adipose stem cells to quickly move to the forefront of cell therapy research. While knowledge of adipose-resident progenitor and stem cells has existed for over 50 years, the ability to extract such cells from tissue discarded in bulk from routine clinical procedures facilitated a pace of research and discovery far more robust than for other stem cell populations. Thus, research with ASCs has encompassed a broad spectrum of ideas, scientific approaches, and technologies, and there is significant diversity in perspectives represented in literature. Clinical, scientific, and industry contributors across numerous disciplines have propelled the field forward. Perhaps due to such ease of access to adipose tissue, the field of adipose stem cell therapy has not been without some controversy, and rogue operators have unfortunately brought the safety of ASCs into question and prompted evolution of regulatory guidelines. Despite the advent of marketing claims sometimes getting ahead of the science, the field of adipose stem cells has great promise to improve the care of patients with many disorders. The ability to understand and leverage the biology of cell populations within the ubiquitous adipose depots will continue to drive the development of new diverse therapies based on principles of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering.