
The Power of Fat - mr_tyzic
http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/human-fat-cells-can-be-used-to-heal-hearts-and-joints
======
babuskov
TLDR: Scientists discovered that human fat extracted by liposuction contains
adult stem cells. Those could be used to repair heart and damaged joints, but
since these particular doctors are cardiologists, they want to repair hearts.
It is still not ready for general usage and needs more testing and
experimenting.

You should not try to get fat to create a reserve of stem cells.

~~~
_Adam
This seems like an obvious conclusion; our bodies are full of stem cells but
that doesn't mean they're used for repair. What I would expect them to prove
is that the body is actually using fat stem cells for repair of other organs.

I didn't read the whole article (long, information sparse), so I don't know if
they came to this conclusion.

~~~
babuskov
They are currently focused on extracting stem cells from the fat and using
those to repair tissue by injecting the extracted cells directly to the heart.

There are complications, because safe way to do it is not very precise and
stem cells would not attach to the heart. Trying it multiple times would
increase chances of infection, which is not good for recovering heart, etc.

------
exratione
A terrible byline: "Human fat cells can be used to regenerate damaged hearts
and ageing joints. So should we start piling on the pounds?"

Piling on the fat is about as effective as smoking if you want a reliably slow
way to shorten your lifespan by a decade or more [1] while at the same time
considerably increasing your lifetime medical expenditures [2].

That visceral fat around your organs works a number on your biochemistry,
increasing chronic inflammation [3] with all its detrimental consequences.
That is bad enough but other unfortunate and more poorly understood changes
take place in metabolism when you eat a very high calorie diet consistently,
of the sort needed to sustain a lot of fat tissue, pushing nutrient sensing
mechanisms into overload. [4]

There is magical thinking everywhere when laypeople talk about medical
technologies. But this fat-related example is particularly egregious.

[1]: [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-07/iaft-
sfl07121...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-07/iaft-
sfl071210.php)

[2]: [http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-12/dumc-
hcc12161...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-12/dumc-
hcc121613.php)

[3]:
[http://www.houstonmethodist.org/body.cfm?id=495&action=detai...](http://www.houstonmethodist.org/body.cfm?id=495&action=detail&ref=1003)

[4]:
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10863-009-9229-3](http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10863-009-9229-3)

~~~
barrkel
The article is actually about fatty deposits containing stem cells - the
benefits come from using stem cells.

That's if the automated summary linked to elsewhere is to be believed.

Long articles prompt people to react to headlines rather than the substance of
the article. That's why I suggested that a summary was needed, yet was biffed
in the head multiple times for.

~~~
babuskov
I really don't understand why, perhaps people were mad that you were
complaining instead of providing the summary for them ;)

One of the reasons why I enjoy HN is that I can read comments first, which
works very fast on any device, does not load 20+ javascript and CSS files and
is surely not going to make my browser crawl to a halt. I read comments for
almost everything, but only hit the original site once in 20 times or less.

This article was trending and there were no comments, so I figured I would
read it, and if it's any good, provide TLDR for the rest of us. It's a way of
thanking all the others who provided useful comments to me in the past.

BTW, I did not down-vote you, I actually went to read it and provide TLDR. I
guess you were just too eager and could not wait till I complete reading it :)

------
swombat
An authentic scientific thriller! Shows the excitement of patient research met
with failure after failure and, eventually, a cautious success, followed by
learning something important and opening up further avenues of research.

Lean entrepreneurs take note! This is your job too!

------
zaroth
[Not quite TLDR, but call it Cliff Notes... most of this is directly quoted,
but I have done some editorializing.]

In 2001, some researchers at UCLA discovered that fat cells (adipose) contain
an abundance of adult stem cells. Separate out the mature fat cells and the
remaining cells, which they called PLA, can be coaxed into forming bone and
cartilage.

Jalees Rehman and Keith March at Indiana University decided to see if they
could use these cells to repair the heart and grow new blood vessels. Their
"goal was to convert fat stem cells from liposuction aspirates into
cardiovascular cells, such as cardiomyocytes or endothelial cells that form
the lining of all blood vessels."

Over the course of the next year, although they had a few cultures that did
seem to behave like cardiac cells, they couldn't reliably produce them.

The team learned of reports that adult bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells
released growth factors that nourished and accelerated the regeneration of
neighbouring cells. Researchers were increasingly calling these stem cells
‘stromal cells’, from the Latin ‘stroma’ for mattress or covering, to signify
their support function.

They decided to try growing PLA cells side by side with endothelial cells and
studying what occurred. When they added PLA cells to the gels, the growth of
the blood-vessel-like tubes increased several-fold. "Analysing the PLA genes
and proteins they produced, we found not one, but a multitude of factors that
promoted survival, regeneration and growth of blood vessels. Synergy between
all the factors likely explained why they were so effective. These growth
factors not only activated the growth of endothelial cells, they also made
endothelial cells more resilient to stress. In the aftermath of this work, I
decided to rename PLA cells ‘adipose stromal cells’ (ASCs), to emphasise the
fact that it was their ‘stromal’ or caretaker function that aided in their
ability to form blood vessels."

Especially important was the discovery that ASCs did not just blindly churn
out growth factors. Their productivity was regulated by the cell’s ability to
sense oxygen. When placed in a low-oxygen environment, the ASCs doubled or
tripled production of factors necessary for the growth of blood vessels. Since
heart and limb muscle tissues of patients with blood vessel blockages suffer
from low oxygen levels; implanting ASCs that released therapeutic molecules
based on oxygen levels seemed almost too good to be true.

They did a preliminary test on mice, and met with success. (why does it always
work on mice?!) They cut off blood supply to the lower parts of the legs of
experimental mice. Half the mice then received an injection of human ASCs into
the leg muscle. We observed an astonishing recovery of blood flow through new
blood vessels in ASC-treated mice, but not our controls.

Since then, clinical trials are proceeding somewhat rapidly, in part due to
FDA exemptions for treatment with one’s own cells, as long as modifications
are no more than minor and cells are re-injected during the same procedure.
"The irony is that the less effort such clinics spend on processing and
characterising the cells they are injecting into patients, the more likely
they are to get away with it." These exemptions may encourage treating with
under-processed cells, since too much processing voids the exemption, but it
remains to be seen if theres low-hanging fruit here, or if scientists will
have to work much harder to refine the processing in order to see actual
clinical benefit from injecting ASC.

~~~
anigbrowl
_why does it always work on mice?!_

Mice are cheap, live fairly short lives (a big plus if you're studying
hereditary things), easy to handle, genetically quite similar to us, and
research mice have been bred to the point of near0uniformity in genetic terms,
making for greater reproducibility. Additionally, there are transgenci mice
that can express human genes, and mice with no immune systems which are ideal
for studying disease.

~~~
Centigonal
> _research mice have been bred to the point of near[-]uniformity in genetic
> terms, making for greater reproducibility._

Doesn't that also introduce a bias toward experimental treatments that happen
to work well with the genetics of research mice, but not those of other mice,
vs. treatments that don't work well on research mice, but that mice with
different genes respond well to?

In other words, would treatment that works really well for research mice but
not the majority of other mice be able to make it through mouse trials without
anyone finding that out?

Are there different lines of mice to mitigate that? Is that kind of genetic
fluke uncommon?

~~~
josephpmay
Yes, there are many (potential) problems caused by the homogeneous nature of
research mice. It's an under-considered variable in a lot of research, and,
from my knowledge, hasn't really been studied until recently.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I never before heard that this was a big issue; could you please tell what
those problems are?

~~~
jrabone
Anecdotally, tests for skin-contact carcinogens can be skewed because the lab
mice are prone to develop skin cancers anyway.

------
samstave
I would love to see human adult stem cells used to repair some organ coupled
with a transfusion of "young blood" as well to see the effect on the growth,
overall.

