Institute of Orthopaedics, Chinese PLA General Hospital; Beijing Key Lab of Regenerative Medicine in Orthopaedics; Key Laboratory of Musculoskeletal Trauma & War Injuries, PLA; 28 Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100853, China.
Department of Anesthesia & Surgery Center, Chinese PLA General Hospital, 28 Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100853, China.
Curr Stem Cell Res Ther. 2017;12(6):513-521. doi: 10.2174/1574888X12666170321111211.
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) represent a promising alternative source for cartilage tissue engineering. However, MSC culture is labor-intensive, so these cells cannot be applied immediately to regenerate cartilage for clinical purposes. Risks during the ex vivo expansion of MSCs, such as infection and immunogenicity, can be a bottleneck in their use in clinical tissue engineering. As a novel stem cell source, pericytes are generally considered to be the origin of MSCs. Pericytes do not have to undergo time-consuming ex vivo expansion because they are uncultured cells. Adipose tissue is another optimal stem cell reservoir. Because adipose tissue is well vascularized, a considerable number of pericytes are located around blood vessels in this accessible and dispensable tissue, and autologous pericytes can be applied immediately for cartilage regeneration.
Thus, we suggest that adipose tissue-derived pericytes are promising seed cells for cartilage regeneration.
Many studies have been performed to develop isolation methods for the adipose tissuederived stromal vascular fraction (AT-SVF) using lipoaspiration and sorting pericytes from AT-SVF. These methods are useful for sorting a large number of viable pericytes for clinical therapy after being combined with automatic isolation using an SVF device and automatic magnetic-activated cell sorting. These tools should help to develop one-step surgery for repairing cartilage damage. However, the use of adipose tissue-derived pericytes as a cell source for cartilage tissue engineering has not drawn sufficient attention and preclinical studies are needed to improve cell purity, to increase sorting efficiency, and to assess safety issues of clinical applications.
间充质干细胞（MSCs）是一种很有前途的软骨组织工程替代来源。然而，MSC 培养非常耗时，因此这些细胞不能立即用于临床目的的软骨再生。MSCs 体外扩增过程中的风险，如感染和免疫原性，可能成为其在临床组织工程中应用的瓶颈。作为一种新型的干细胞来源，周细胞通常被认为是 MSC 的起源。周细胞不需要进行耗时的体外扩增，因为它们是未培养的细胞。脂肪组织是另一个最佳的干细胞库。由于脂肪组织具有良好的血管化，大量的周细胞位于这种易于获得和可利用的组织中血管周围，并且可以立即应用自体周细胞进行软骨再生。
因此，我们认为脂肪组织来源的周细胞是软骨再生有前途的种子细胞。
已经进行了许多研究，以开发使用吸脂术从脂肪组织基质血管部分（SVF）中分离脂肪组织来源的周细胞的方法，并从 AT-SVF 中分离周细胞。这些方法与 SVF 装置的自动分离以及自动磁激活细胞分选相结合，可用于对大量有活力的周细胞进行分选，以便在临床治疗中应用。这些工具应该有助于开发用于修复软骨损伤的一步手术。然而，将脂肪组织来源的周细胞用作软骨组织工程的细胞来源尚未引起足够的关注，需要进行临床前研究以提高细胞纯度、提高分选效率，并评估临床应用的安全性问题。
