The chief plastic surgeon at UF Health Jacksonville Dr. John Murray sat down with News4Jax to discuss how fat discarded during liposuction will be used to help cure disease.
Typically, after a liposuction procedure, the fat is just thrown away, but researchers at UF Health Jacksonville have learned that fat tissue needs to be studied because it contains stem cells that may be critical to curing disease.
The focus will be on stem cell research that could teach science more about something that sounds like science fiction — tissue regeneration.
“We can begin to engineer those cells to decrease those chronic diseases,” Murray said.
Murray said his team will take fat extracted during liposuction procedures and study it.
“Once we obtain that fat, instead of discarding it, now we’re going to use that proprietary technology to isolate those stem cells to begin to analyze them,” Murray said.
