Hooray
for fat! Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles,
discovered that human fat is an excellent source for stem cells that can
potentially develop into cures for many diseases:
Stem
cells were discovered in human fat in 2001, and called adipose stem
cells (ASTs). The cells described by the UCLA scientists, led by
Gregorio Chazenbalk, in the journal PLOS One, are different.
Unlike
ASTs, these cells, dubbed MUSE by Mari Dezawa, leader of the Japanese
team that first discovered them in bone marrow, appear to be
pluripotent, more like embryonic stem cells rather than so-called
“adult” stem cells. That means they can develop into any kind of tissue
in the body.
MUSE stands for Multilineage-differentiating
Stress-Enduring cells, and their ability endure stress is how Chazenbalk
found them in fat, by accident.
“I was doing ASC isolation,” he
said in an NBCNews.com interview, late at night when a critical machine
stopped working. Because it was late, Chazenbalk couldn’t borrow a
machine from another lab. So his cells received no nutrients, hardly any
oxygen, and most died. “Then, instead of throwing them all away, I
decided to see if some survived.”
Some did, and eventually formed
what looked like clusters of cells typical of embryonic stem cells.
These turned out to be MUSE cells.
Take
that, skinny people!
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