These Newly Identified Cells Could Change the Face of Plastic Surgery

So how did this new cell elude scientists and doctors for so long? In a way, it is not. Investigators and graduate students scoured centuries of scientific papers for any missing trace of cartilage fat. He found a clue in a German book from 1854 by Franz Leydig, a contemporary of Charles Darwin. “Anything and everything he could put under a microscope, he did,” Plikus said. Leydig’s book describes fat-like cells in a sample of cartilage from a rat’s ear. But the tools of the 19th century could not surpass these observations, and, realizing that a more accurate census of bone tissue might be useful for medicine, Plikus decided to solve the case. a thin layer of mouse ear skin. A green dye that preferentially stains fat molecules reveals tissue squishy blobs. They isolated these lipid-laden cells and analyzed their contents. All of your cells contain the same library of genes, but those genes are not always activated. What genes do these cells call? What protein is in it? These data show that lipochondrocytes appear to be very different, molecularly, from fat cells. Fat cells have an obscure function in the body: storing energy. When the body stores energy, the cell’s storage of lipids becomes large; when the body burns fat, the cells shrink. Lipochondrocytes, it turns out, do not do that. The researchers studied the ears of mice fed a high-fat diet instead of a calorie-restricted diet. Despite rapid weight gain or loss, lipochondrocytes in the ear do not change. “Must be structural.” Lipochondrocytes are like balloons filled with vegetable oil. They are soft and amorphous but still resist compression. This contributes significantly to the structural properties of cartilage. Based on data from rodents, the tensile strength, durability, and stiffness of cartilage increased 77 to 360 percent when comparing cartilage tissue with and without lipochondrocytes—suggesting that these cells make cartilage more flexible. . In the outer ear of Pallas’s long-tongued bat, for example, the lipocartilage underlies a series of ruffles that scientists believe attunes to the right wavelength of sound. The team has found lipochondrocytes in the cartilage of human fetuses, too. And Lee says this discovery finally explains something that reconstructive surgeons often observe: “Cartilage is always a little slippery,” he says, especially in young children. “You can feel it, you can see it. These new findings show that lipochondrocytes fine-tune the biomechanics of some of our cartilage. Stiff cartilage proteins without lipids are more durable and are used to build weight-bearing joints in the neck, back, and—yes, you get it.” -ribs, one of the traditional sources of cartilage for implants. where lipocartilage shines. one day envisions many lipocartilage organoids in a dish and 3D-printing in any desired shape. .Although the operation is far away, the study suggests that it is feasible to grow lipochondrocytes from embryos and isolate them safely for transplantation. Lee figures that the regulator will not greenlight the use of embryonic cells for the condition non-life-threatening, but he said he would be more optimistic if researchers can grow transplantable tissue from adult cells derived from the patient. (Plikus says a new patent application he has filed involves using stem cells from adult tissue.) Lipochondrocytes are renewing our understanding of how young bones should look and feel—and why. “When we try to build, say, the nose, sometimes we can use it [lipid-filled cells] for a little padding.” Lee said. Lipocartilage could fill that void as a transplantable tissue — or it could inspire better biomimicking materials. “Maybe both,” he said. “It’s fun to think about. Maybe that’s one thing which has disappeared.

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