Adipose Derived Stem Cells Characterization from Human Lipoaspirate: A Comparative Study

Background Numerous studies have provided data on the efficacy of ADSCs, supporting their use in current and future clinical applications. This is the first study to our knowledge, which aims at comparing the cell viability and the absolute number of mesenchymal stem cells and ADSCs from three different approaches of preparing adipose tissue for autologous transplantation. Patients & MethodsAdipose tissue was taken from the hip/thigh region of 8 female donors undergoing liposuction. From every patient, there was sent three different fat samples: lipoaspirated fat decanted (A), lipoaspirated fat prepared by normal saline washing (B) and stromal enriched lipograft (C). Multi-parameter flow cytometry to determine the absolute number and viability of ADSCs was performed. ResultsThe mean absolute cell counts per gram of adipose tissue were 8.33x10⁶ in samples A and 5.97x10⁶ in sample C. In B samples the mean absolute cell counts per gram of adipose tissue were 2.13x10⁶. The presence of ADSCs specific markers in all the C samples showed high expression (> 95%) in the positive markers and low expression (< 2%) in the negative markers and are essential to validate the purity of adipose stem cells in a sample. ConclusionThe results obtained from the analysis of eight different donors of lipoaspirate indicate that the highest absolute number of viable adipose derived stem cells is found in the Stromal Enriched Lipograft (sample C). Their purity was confirmed by the high expression (> 95%) in the positive markers and low expression (< 2%) in the negative markers.