14 DAY TRIAL // Having small breasts can turn into an obsession for many women. Losing them, either totally or partially, is a disaster! And this is exactly what happens in many cases of breast cancer.
Scientists have tried to take fat from other body parts (breasts are made mainly of fatty tissue) to build up breasts, but often the fat is just reabsorbed or dies and becomes hard and lumpy. Now the stem cell technology could tackle this field, from repairing damaged/extirpated breasts in cases of breast cancer to replacing the breast implants with a healthier solution.
In a breakthrough approach doctors managed to use stem cells from liposuctioned fat to correct breast defects in women with removed cancerous lumps, a promise for millions of victims of breast cancer, even if the research is actually in incipient stage. The new Japanese research reported Saturday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium was carried on 21 subjects.
The company that developed the method, San Diego-based Cytori Therapeutics, will pass to the next stages of the research, involving larger clinical trials in Europe and Japan in 2008. Only in US, over 100,000 women experience lumpectomies (lump removal) annually, a procedure done instead of mastectomy, which extirpates the breast completely. But this procedure leaves deformed breasts, as about a third of a woman's breast can be cut off.
"The defect initially may not be as noticeable but it often gets worse, especially if the woman also has radiation treatment. Once one develops, options to repair it are limited" said Dr. Sameer Patel, reconstructive surgeon at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
Available implants are for rebuilding breasts after mastectomies, not matching deformed breasts. The solution is usually traumatic, scarring and invasive: the other breast is usually brought to the size of the damaged one, or a back muscle tissue is inserted into the deformed breast for a more even shape.
The Japanese approach is based on the recent finding that fatty tissue abounds in stem cells, which can generate any type of tissue. The subjects, all breast cancer patients, were liposuctioned in the tummy, hips or thighs areas. 50% of the extracted fat was used as the main implant material; the other 50% was used for extracting stem cells. Stem cells were injected in three areas around a lumpectomy. 8 months later, "about 80% of the patients are satisfied with the results", said lead researcher Dr. Keizo Sugimachi of Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan.
The researchers also found a significant improvement in breast tissue texture 6 months following the procedure. "The treatment is expected to cost $3,000 to $5,000", said Cytori's president, Dr. Mark Hedrick. "It's got great potential not only for breast but other cosmetic and reconstructive purposes, like filling in facial defects from cancer or trauma", said Dr. Karol Gutowski of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This could make breast cancer patients choose lumpectomies, as many mastectomy patients choose this because of the asymmetry risks.