Stem Cell Advance . . . For Breast Implants
In February, researchers at the University of Illinois told the American Association for the Advancement of Science that they had made progress turning stem cells into “natural” breast implants.
Jerry Mao of the University of Illinois said his group took stem cells that would normally turn into fatty tissue and grew them on a special scaffolding to shape the resulting tissue. His team then implanted the tissue grown from the stem cells into mice where they retained their size and shapes during the four weeks of the project.
Such a technology could one day replace silicone and saline-based implants and be both safer than those technologies as well as possibly retain their size and shape longer. In addition, this sort of technique could be used to grow tissues for all sorts of reconstructive and cosmetic surgery.
Still, there are a lot of unanswered questions that need to be answered, such as how the tissue grown from stem cells would interact with other tissue in the body and whether special growth factors might be needed to have the implant grow within the body (the idea being to implant the stem cells and scaffolding, have the stem cells grow to the size and shape they’re supposed to and then have the scaffolding gradually disintegrate).
Still, Mao told New Scientist that stem-cell based breast implants could be commercially viable within a decade.
Source:
‘Natural’ breast implant advance. The BBC, Michelle Roberts, February 17, 2005.
Stem cells turn into breast implants. Will Knight, New Scientist, February 18, 2005.
The Stem Cell Advance . . . For Breast Implants by Brian Carnell, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Tags: Breast Implants
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