Conventional therapies to address critically sized defects in subcutaneous adipose tissue remain a reconstructive challenge for surgeons, largely due to the lack of graft pre-vascularization. Adipose tissue relies on a dense microvasculature network to deliver nutrients, oxygen, nonadipose tissue-derived growth factors, cytokines, and hormones, as well as transporting adipose tissue-derived endocrine signals to other organ systems. This chapter addresses these vascularization issues by combining decellularized lung matrices with a step-wise seeding of patient-specific adipose-derived stem cells and endothelial cells to develop large-volume, perfusable, and pre-vascularized adipose grafts.
Keywords: Adipose tissue; Adipose-derived stromal/stem cells; Decellularized lung matrix; Perfusion culture; Reconstruction; Vascularization.
© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.