Adipose tissue is a heterogeneous biological tissue composed of various cellular components. The benefit of adipose tissue is that it provides clinicians with a cellular product in the form of a 3-D scaffold.
The chart below outlines the composition of adipose tissue.
Hematopoietic-lineage cells are also found in peripheral blood.
Adipocytes store lipids to provide energy.
Pre-adipocytes are progenitor cells that are able to adopt the adipocyte cell fate.
Endothelial cells are structural components of blood vessels. They are also key players in angiogenesis (vascular cell growth).
Pericytes wrap around the endothelial cells of capillaries and blood vessels. The play a critical role in supporting the survival of endothelial cells and the overall process of angiogenesis.
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are capable of differentiating into many different cell types responsible for the repair or growth of bone, cartilage, muscle, marrow, tendons, ligaments and connective tissue.
Concentrated adipose tissue provides a physical scaffold of multiple cellular components. It lies between platelet-rich plasma and concentrated bone marrow aspirate in terms of stem cell content and cellular heterogeneity, while delivering modest levels of growth factors.36
The benefits of concentrated adipose tissue include:
After the recent discovery of adipose tissue’s stem-cell-rich nature, concentrated adipose tissue is finding increased use in orthopedic applications such as osteoarthritis treatment.25
The Harvest AdiPrep system is the system that generates a purified, MSC-rich graft in just 4 minutes processing time.1