Stem cells from human fat may treat heart disease

STEM cells taken from human fat can be transformed into smooth muscle cells, offering a way to treat many kinds of heart disease, gastrointestinal and bladder ills, US researchers reported this week.

While the experiment does not quite offer a way to turn a pot belly into a flat stomach, the researchers said the transformed cells contracted and relaxed just like smooth muscle cells.

These cells help the heart beat and blood flow, push food through the digestive system and make bladders fill and empty, the researchers reported.

Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the latest to show that fat can be a rich source of the body’s master cells.

“Fat tissue may prove a reliable source of smooth muscle cells that we can use to regenerate and repair damaged organs,” said Dr Larissa Rodriguez, an assistant professor in the Department of Urology at the University of California medical school.

Dr Rodriguez and colleagues incubated adipose-derived stem cells in a nourishing mixture of growth factors, human proteins that encouraged the cells to become smooth muscle cells.

The researchers said scientists have been looking for sources of smooth muscle for organ repair and treating heart disease, gastrointestinal diseases and bladder dysfunction.

“A major obstacle for such an approach has been finding a reliable source of healthy smooth muscle cells that can be safely harvested and that requires minimal manipulation,” they wrote.

One approach has been to take a patient’s own cells from an organ. But studies have shown that stem cells taken from a diseased organ are also damaged.

Transplants grown from a patient’s own fat could be used with no need for anti-rejection drugs, Dr Rodriguez said. Smooth muscle cells have been produced from stem cells found in the brain and bone marrow, but acquiring stem cells from fat is much easier, she added.