Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Human adipose tissue-derived stromal cells (ADSCs) possess exert proliferation and multi-directional ability. As a novel stem cell, it has been widely utilized in tissue engineering and plays an important role in biological and potential therapeutic applications.
OBJECTIVE: To review the research progress, applications and existing problems of human ADSCs in tissue engineering and cell therapy by retrieving relevant publications.
METHODS: PubMed and CNKI databases were undertaken to identify the relevant articles published from January 1960 to January 2009 with the key words of “human adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal cells, isolation, differentiation, immune phenotype, application” both in English and Chinese. The articles relate to biological characteristics and applications of ADSCs were selected. In the same field, the documents published earlier or in the authoritative journals were preferred, and the repetitive studies were excluded.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: A total of 81 documents were searched by computer, and 57 references were included in the final analysis. The results demonstrated that, human ADSCs share many characteristics, including the high proliferative potential and exhibiting the exert ability to undergo multilineage differentiation under appropriate conditions. Human ADSCs can not only utilize for tissue repairing, but also for cell immune modulation and gene therapy. However, there are still problems in its application. With the development of research on human ADSCs, their biological characteristics will be revealed, and their application in tissue repairing, cell therapy, transplantation, as well as gene therapy must be hold a great promise.