Cells From Liposuction Function As Stem Cells?

texchanchan writes "Plastic surgeon Peter Fodor MD filtered stem cells out of fat sucked from people's oversized body parts, then cultured them into 'bone, cartilage, skeletal muscle and nerve cells.' At the rate of 10,000 stem cells per cm³ that's a lot of stem cells. Combine that with this and you might be on the road to regeneration. And, you can have your stem cells banked for later disasters after your liposuction."

Comments

Re:Of course it's illegal

[Drachemorder]

I know I'm feeding a troll, but I should point out that the conservative objection to stem cell research is based on the belief that an embryo is a human life and should be treated as one. It isn't out of any "fear of science" or things of that nature.

You may not agree with that belief, and you have every right to disagree with it, but you should respect the fact that some conservatives actually have reasons for our positions ;)

Of limited use (but still great news)...

[HorsePunchKid]

As I understand it, there are (at least) several types of stem cell that form a kind of heirarchy. At the top, there are totipotent stem cells, which can become any cell (more or less) in the human or the placenta. Once those cells differentiate, you get pluripotent stem cells, which can form any kind of tissue in the developing human. The next differentiation leads to various kinds of multipotent stem cells, which each have a more limited set of things they can eventually form. Note that these differentiations are difficult for biologists to control, since you need a rather precise mixture of biological chemicals in the cell's environment for it to turn into what you want it to.

So anyway, in this particular case, it's great that they can isolate such large quantities of stem cells safely from an adult human, but it's still rather limiting. All those cells will ever be able to form is bone, cartilage, and whatever else that particular type of multipotent cell can give rise to. This is why it's still important to many biologists to be able to collect less-differentiated stem cells. With only that type of cell, we may not be able to learn much about diseases that aren't specifically related to that limited set of tissues. (Though of course there's still a lot left to be learned about even a specific type of multipotent stem cell.)

Big potential problem that'll need attention

[Anonymous Coward]

A big potential problem with stem cells harvested from fatty tissue is that the fatty tissue is where your body tends to store any chlorinated (or other halogenated) hydrocarbons/organic molecules that you happen to ingest during your lifetime. Halogenated organics have a bad tendency to be carcinogenic and mutagenic, so how would you trust that the genetic material in such stem cells has not been compromised? All kinds of toxic stuff like DDT, PCBs, etc that were spread all over our environment are now irremovably incorporated into much of our food supply and yes, everyone who lives and eats in the continental USA has a fair amount of these substances stored in all your fatty tissues.