[Riot]

I'm not Dr. Allday, but I've used stem cells in animals (dog and horse) in tendon and joint therapy. Adipose-derived stem cells have been found to be limited in their application, and have already been relatively abandoned in veterinary medicine in favor of bone-marrow derived stem cells.

There are currently multiple uses clinically for stem cell therapy in horses, it is a very common clinical application.

Current research investigation in laminitis seems to be focusing less on adipose-derived stem cells, and more on a variety of bone-marrow derived.

But a major focus is drug use for vessel dilation, and identification of inflammatory mediators/markers that augment the disease cascade (that we can interfer with)

Veterinary medicine is about 10 years ahead of human medicine (due to research funding restrictions the past 10 years) but now is starting to catch up. So we serve as a good baseline for human applications. Human medicine is looking at important clinical applications such as nerve regeneration, pancreatic cells (diabetes), etc. Fat-derived stem cells are not as useful here, either.

As the article notes, there is promise for more realistic breast augmentation using fat-derived stem cells. But if you want skin for a burn victim, you don't use adipose-derived cells.

TheHorse.com has lots of good articles about current stem cell therapy in horses.