**Adipose Derived Stem Cells: Current State of the Art and Prospective Role in Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering**

Vincenzo Vindigni, Giorgio Giatsidis, Francesco Reho , Erica Dalla Venezia , Marco Mammana and Bassetto Franco

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/55924

**1. Introduction**

#### **1.1. Adipose tissue: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly**

Excessive body fat has been socially recognized for ages as a symbol of wealth and prosperity. Clues of these concepts may be found in arts and literature. In addition, it has been substantially ignored by scientists, anatomists and physicians for many centuries. As a matter of fact only a minimal number of medical reports focused on "fat" have been historically handed down. Nowadays, however, adipose tissue has become a growing point of most interest for research‐ ers and physicians worldwide. Notably, societies and health care systems are facing a severe pandemic rise of obesity and of several associated co-morbidities such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic disorders and cancer. Fat and misregulation of adipose-related pathways are recognized as key elements in each of these processes. Importantly, the role of adipose tissue has progressively evolved from being a passive energy store to representing an important endocrine organ that directly modulates metabolism and immunity towards an healthy phenotype or leading to pathologic processes. The investigation of the physiologicpathologic attitudes of adipose tissue is currently among most relevant scientific targets of researchers, endocrinologists and bariatric surgeons. Beside, in the last fifteen years adipose tissue has been reappraised also for a different reason. In fact, nearly forty years after the identification of bone marrow stem cells, it has been gathering attention for the opportunity to obtain autologous pluripotent adipose-derived stromal stem cells (ADSCs). This population of cells has been extensively investigated and it currently holds out many hopes for prospective

© 2013 Vindigni et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2013 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

stem cell therapies for the repair and regeneration of various tissues and organs in a large number of different diseases. Thus, over the past years, this field has become a very active and attractive area of clinical and experimental research, providing significant outcomes and reaching important milestones. Today adipose tissue embodies an hot spot of regenerative medicine that may give rise to a new era of active stem cell therapy.
