Residing within adipose tissue is a small population of mesenchymal stem cells that are genetically stable, resistant to senescence in culture, and capable of trilineage differentiation.

This population is attractive for tissue engineering because these cells are technically straightforward to acquire, the cell yield is favorable compared with other methods of stem cell acquisition, and the harvest of tissue from which they are derived is surgically convenient, aesthetically desirable, and functionally tolerable.

The use of stem cells as a source of fibroblasts in regenerative medicine and in a wide range of wound-healing applications is currently the source of intense interest and it is curious that there are not more reports comparing differentiated fibroblasts from primary dermal fibroblasts.

This paper aims to address this deficiency by comparing ex vivo–engineered fibroblasts differentiated from adipose stem cells with primary dermal fibroblasts harvested from the same donor.

To do this the authors have compared the expression profiles of extracellular matrix proteins and have also compared migration using scratch test assays.