Autologous Tissue Engineering with Three-Dimensional, Porous Human Fat Scaffolds

Abstract

Since tissue engineering emerged in the early 1990s, a paradigm shift has occurred from tissue grafting and organ transplantation to a tissue engineering approach. Here, we present a novel, autologous tissue engineering strategy using human fat scaffolds. Indeed, fat tissues are found all over the human body and easily obtained in large quantities with minimal risk. We have developed three dimensional (3D), porous scaffolds from human fat tissues, which were obtained from healthy donors by liposuction. Primary human preadipocytes were also isolated from the adipose tissue. The human fat scaffold possessed an open pore microstructure with a high degree of interconnectivity and the pores were fairly uniform. For the in vivo studies, preadipocyte-seeded and unseeded scaffolds were transplanted into nude mice. Lipid accumulation was clearly observed in both grafts eight weeks after transplantation. New vessels were clearly seen on the grafts. Even without preadipocyte seeding, the human fat scaffold exhibited high compatibility to surrounding tissues. Adipose deposits were quite homogeneous in the grafts, suggesting ingrowth and differentiation of preadipocytes from the neighboring host tissue. The overall results demonstrated that the 3D porous human fat scaffold, even without preadipocyte seeding, strongly promoted migration and adipogenic differentiation of the host preadipocytes.