When considering sources of stem cells, lipoaspirate presents itself as a favourable, readily accessible supply, which can be obtained through minimally invasive procedures, without donor site morbidity. Additionally, the concentration of stem cells within adipose has been reported to be significantly higher than bone marrow. Coupled with the large quantities of lipoaspirate that can be harvested at any one time, adipose may be considered as a future gold standard stem cell source. Immunophenotyping of cultured adSCs has also effect astrocytes dopaminergic neurons revealed.90% similarity with bone marrow-derived stem cells including CD90, CD29, CD44, CD73 and CD105 cell surface antigens. Isolation of stromal vascular fraction from rat adipose was first achieved by Rodbell et al. in the 1960 s. Despite this, the notion of adSCs was not widely recognised until 2001 when Zuk et al. demonstrated SVF contained large numbers of adSCs, which could differentiate into osteogenic, chondrogenic, adipogenic and myogenic lineages. To date, the majority of approaches for isolating adSCs from SVF are based on the same basic principle; exploiting the ability of adSCs to adhere to plasma treated tissue culture polystyrene substrates. However, this simple but crude approach leads to a heterogeneous culture that contains a variety of adherent cells which includes fibroblasts and endothelial cells, ultimately resulting in a population of which adSCs are a minority. The phenotypic, functional and particularly immunomodulatory effects of prolonged adSC in vitro culture are not fully understood, therefore robust and reproducible characterisation of freshly isolated adSCs would present a breakthrough in interpreting complex adSC cell biology. However this has largely been hindered by their rarity and the ability to isolate substantial numbers from fresh tissue to perform immediate and reproducible molecular biology. Several methods are available to isolate adSCs and other primary cells. Currently the two most commonly applied techniques are cell sorting by flow cytometry and paramagnetic particle isolation, both of which allow selection of cells based on antibody/antigen immunolabelling. Flow cytometry utilises fluidic processing to localise target cells into drops or diverted pathways. There are however significant hydrodynamic forces associated with this, which stem cells in particular are affected by. Magnetic particles currently in use are 50 nm24.5 mm diameter, to which cell-specific antibodies are attached. These bind cells, which then become decorated with the particles; the complexes are subsequently exposed to a magnetic field resulting in separation of specific tagged cells from a heterogeneous cell population. This provides a convenient method of selecting cells; however the very small size of the paramagnetic particles means they are typically internalised into the cell, resulting in potential phenotypic changes. Additionally, these small particles are not compatible with the dense proteinaceous matrix of primary tissue where they are observed to bind strongly to tissue materials and even air bubbles : therefore extensive tissue pre-processing to create a simpler matrix for cell capture is required. Commonly flow cytometry or immunomagnetic selection relies on negative depletion to remove non-stem cells from the culture milieu. However the heterogeneity of primary tissue renders it impossible to attain homogeneous stem cell cultures even after several rounds of depletion.