Women whose bodies are being rebuilt after cancer surgery may be able to benefit from a new generation of stem cell "enriched" fat grafts, researchers report today.
The treatment has been developed on animals and now ten healthy volunteers have tested its effectiveness on humans.
Surgeons have increasingly tried to help women restore their breasts by using natural fat from the women’s own bodies. But most of it does not survive.
Reporting in The Lancet, Danish researchers say the animal studies suggest that enriching the graft with stem cells – cultured in the laboratory – can improve the success of the treatment.
In the latest study, the human volunteers had small amounts of enriched fat injected into the upper arms.
These were retained for 121 days – and at this point more than 80% of the original graft had survived, the researchers report.
Researcher Dr Trojahn Kølle said: "These promising results add significantly to the prospect of stem cell use in clinical settings and show that adipose-derived stem cell graft enrichment could render lipofilling a reliable procedure, since the resorption rate, quality of tissue, and safety can be predicted."
Writing in the journal, Peter Rubin and Kacey Marra, from the University of Pittsburgh, USA, say it will be important to establish whether use of stem cells could stimulate the recurrence of breast cancer.
They write: "These therapies could revolutionise breast reconstruction after cancer and reconstruction of deformities after trauma, for example."
The Lancet 27 September 2013 [abstract]
Leave a Reply