New source for regenerative stem cells? Your fat, study suggests

By Brian Alexander, NBC News Contributor

Researchers based at the University of California, Los Angeles announced today that theyve found an abundant, cheap, easy-to-obtain source of stem cells that could prove to be ideal for regenerating all the basic tissue types of the human body.

That source is adipose tissue, or fat.

Stem cells were discovered in human fat in 2001, and called adipose stem cells (ASTs). The cells described by the UCLA scientists, led by Gregorio Chazenbalk, in the journal PLOS One, are different.

Unlike ASTs, these cells, dubbed MUSE by Mari Dezawa, leader of the Japanese team that first discovered them in bone marrow, appear to be pluripotent, more like embryonic stem cells rather than so-called adult stem cells. That means they can develop into any kind of tissue in the body.

MUSE stands for Multilineage-differentiating Stress-Enduring cells, and their ability endure stress is how Chazenbalk found them in fat, by accident.

I was doing ASC isolation, he said in an NBCNews.com interview, late at night when a critical machine stopped working. Because it was late, Chazenbalk couldnt borrow a machine from another lab. So his cells received no nutrients, hardly any oxygen, and most died. Then, instead of throwing them all away, I decided to see if some survived.

Some did, and eventually formed what looked like clusters of cells typical of embryonic stem cells. These turned out to be MUSE cells.

Chazenbalk then obtained several liters of fat from plastic surgeons who had sucked it out of Los Angeles-area women during liposuction procedures, and created a formula for teasing MUSE cells out of the fat.

Chazenbalks team winnowed the collection of adipose cells by exposing them to stressful chemicals, low oxygen and low nutrition. The survivors were MUSE cells.

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New source for regenerative stem cells? Your fat, study suggests