Potential Therapeutic Applications of Adipose Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells

Stem cells are subdivided in two main categories: embryonic and adult stem cells.In principle, pluripotent embryonic stem cells might differentiate in any celltypes of the organism, whereas the potential of adult stem cells would be morerestricted. Although adult stem cells from bone marrow have been initially themost extensively studied, those derived from human adipose tissue have beenlately more widely investigated, because of several advantages. Firstly, they canbe easily obtained in large amounts from subcutaneous adipose tissue, withminimal pain and morbidity for the patients during harvesting. In addition, they feature low immunogenicity and can differentiate not only in cells of mesodermal lineage (adipocytes, osteoblasts and chondrocytes, muscle cells) but also incells of other germ layers, such as neural, or epithelial cells. As theirmultilineage differentiation capabilities are increasingly highlighted, theirpossible use in cell-based regenerative medicine is now broadly explored. Infact, starting from in vitro observations, many studies have already entered the pre-clinic and clinic phases. In this review, because of our main scientificinterest, adipogenic, osteogenic, chondrogenic and neurogenic differentiationabilities of adipose derived mesenchymal stem cells, as well as their possibletherapeutic applications, are chiefly focused. In addition, their ability todifferentiate towards muscle, epithelial, pancreatic and hepatic cells is brieflyreported.