Cytori Celution

There may be one bright light in these obese times: fat contains about 200 times more progenitor cells than bone marrow.  For years, surgeons have sometimes implanted fat into locations that were not healing well, unaware that stem cells in the fat were working some magic.  Now, a San Diego company, Cytori Therapeutics, has a portable machine that can separate fat stem cells from a liposuction sample to be used in muscle restoration, such as injured heart tissue.  Because the machine can extract and concentrate the stem cells so quickly, it raises the possibility of therapy within 24 hours of a heart attack happening. The procedure has been tested with humans in Europe, where patients who were treated within twelve hours had half as much heart damage as those who were not treated.    MORE

Image Credit: Cytori Therapeutics and Technology Review