Clinical Adipose Stem Cell Banking: Is young better? Print

Researcher: J. Peter Rubin, MD

Grant Award: ASERF Interim Grant

Amount Awarded: $65,000

Project Name: Clinical Adipose Stem Cell Banking: Is young better? 

Project Summary: Adult stem cells have the potential to transform plastic and reconstructive therapies and have been used to clinically enhance fat grafting, for skin rejuvenation, radiation injury, diabetic wound healing, ischemic neovacularization osseous tissue engineering, acute burn and other indication. Adipose tissue is an ideal source of stem cells (ASCs) that are capable of differentiating to multiple tissue types, potentially immunosuppressive, and capable of homing to damages tissue. ASCs are a very exciting stem cell population in a very exciting time of regenerative cell therapy discovery. Because of the large number of potential applications, patients may choose to bank ASCs at the time of elective liposuction procedures for future clinical use, with the premise that cells banked at a younger age will have superior function to older cells. To date, no study has ever examined biologic differences between banked stem cells freshly harvested from the same patient at a much later age(<10 years).We anticipate such data will be very high impact and will generate a highly relevant publication for plastic surgeons.

Specific aim is to conduct a comparative pilot study of ASCs harvested and banked ten years ago to freshly harvested and banked ASCs.