Published online Sep 26, 2014. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v6.i4.467
Revised: August 25, 2014
Accepted: August 30, 2014
Published online: September 26, 2014
Processing time: 64 Days and 16.2 Hours
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) provide a novel source for generating adipocytes, thus opening new avenues for fundamental research and clinical medicine. We present the adipogenic potential of hiPSCs and the various methods to derive hiPSC-MSCs. We discuss the main characteristic of hiPSC-MSCs, which is their low adipogenic capacity as compared to adult-MSCs. Finally, we propose several hypotheses to explanation this feature, underlying a potential critical role of the micro-environment. We favour the hypothesis that the range of factors or culture conditions required to induce adipocyte differentiation of MSCs derived from adult tissues and from embryonic-like cells could differ.
Core tip: In this mini-review, we summarized the potential of human induced pluripotent stem cells to generate white and brown adipocytes and we discussed their therapeutic capacities for obesity and lipodystrophy diseases. Then, we described the main approaches to derive human induced pluripotent stem cells-mesenchymal stem cells (hiPSC-MSCs). Finally, we underlined the low adipogenic capacity of hiPSC-MSCs compared to adult-MSCs and proposed several hypothesis to explain this feature.