Fat stem cells dog dodgy hips

Ben Herbert and Marc Wilkins are pioneers of proteomics science in Australia, so why are they leading research into adult stem cells? Serendipity, liposuction and a mutual veterinarian, it seems.

The two have been at the forefront of the proteomics revolution in Australia, first meeting in the early nineties at Sydney’s Macquarie University when proteomics was in its infancy.

Wilkins first coined the term ‘proteomics’, and the duo were part of a group from Macquarie that struck out into the commercial world with the biotech company Proteome Systems, which continued their academic work in developing new technologies for proteomics research and applying it to the drug discovery.

Now back in academia – Herbert is an associate professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, and is director of its Proteomics Centre of Expertise, while Wilkins is a professor of systems biology at the University of New South Wales – they are also non-executive directors Regeneus, a private biotechnology company that provides the technology for adult stem cell transplants in dogs with dodgy hips and joints.

And what brought them together for this new venture is fat, or more strictly the vast quantities of biological material to be found in adipose tissue.

At UNSW, Wilkins is working on protein-protein interactions, protein complexes and on building up a picture of protein interaction networks. In short, he is building very large datasets to try to visualise exactly how the insides of cells work.

Herbert and his team are also working on this very difficult but emerging area of science, providing their expertise in protein separations and attempting to separate proteins from protein complexes under native conditions.

They have predominantly been working in yeast, and have recently published a paper on their work. It is mammalian cells that they really want to target, however, but the main issue has been the scarcity of material.

“It was a mutual colleague who mentioned that the only place to get large amounts of human material from somebody who wasn’t dead was fat from liposuction,” Herbert says.

“We all thought that sounded like a good idea, and in our early research we found that there is a small group of people around the world who are working on fat.

“They have known for about 10 years that adult stem cells reside in reasonably high numbers in fat, so we were diverted from our original idea and started to think about what we could do with these stem cells.”

They consulted another colleague, Dr Graham Vesey, a microbiologist who has a great deal of expertise in flow cytometry and antibodies on cell surfaces. Vesey is a well-known figure in the biotechnology world, having co-founded a company called BTF that developed the wonderful BioBall, a water-soluble ball containing a precise number of bacteria that is used in microbiology for quantitative quality control.

BTF was acquired by bioMérieux in September 2007 and BioBall is now being sold into more than 30 countries.

Vesey came on board as CEO of a new company they named Regeneus, and in a serendipitous turn of fate, he and Herbert happen to get their dogs treated at the Ku-Ring-Gai Veterinary Hospital, one of the largest and best-equipped practices in Sydney.

Discussing with practice senior partners Dr Angus Ross and Dr Jamie Geddes the possibilities of using stem cells from adipose tissue to treat a number of diseases, they hit on an interesting idea: why not try it out in dogs?

That is what they are now doing. Ku-Ring-Gai Veterinary Hospital and Regeneus have now treated over 60 dogs with degenerative arthritis with autologous adult stem cell transplants, and the results have been extraordinarily good.

The vets are doing the liposuction and the transplants, while Regeneus takes care of separating the cells from the connective tissue, selecting the stem cells and purifying them ready for injection.

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