New advancement, new awareness

If you know someone who has battled breast cancer, you are familiar with its life-changing effects. Aside from the mental and physical hardship breast cancer takes on a woman’s body, it often leaves outer cosmetic alterations that act as a constant  reminder.

Somewhere between diagnosis and recovery, many women undergo lumpectomies, in which a cancerous tumor is removed and the surrounding area is treated with radiation therapy. A more invasive procedure is a mastectomy in which all of the breast tissue is removed.  

It is common to walk away from these surgeries with severely disfigured breast tissue. All would agree that surviving cancer outweighs the possibility of physical disfigurement, but many argue that exterior appearance is an important part of a woman’s post-recovery health.

After a mastectomy or lumpectomy, many women decide to undergo breast augmentation surgery to attain their natural, pre-cancer shape. The surgery serves no medical purpose aside from restoring confidence and normalcy.

The words “breast augmentation” immediately garner thoughts of silicon and saline implants. Despite the medical advances and professional accomplishments of plastic surgeons, implants tend to fail when it comes to replicating the look and feel of breasts. Natural enhancement that mimics the soft tissue of breasts isn’t available.

A company named Cytori Thereapeutics has the potential to change that.
They are in the process of engineering fat tissue liposuctioned from a woman’s body to act and feel like breast tissue.

To many non-science majors (myself included), the idea seems simple; suck some fat out of this area and inject it into this area.

Easy right?

Nope. Any scientist will tell you that the process is much more complicated.

Researchers have previously tried injecting fat into the breasts to achieve a less dangerous breast augmentation. But over time the fat loses its shape and absorbs into the body, leaving no permanent difference in size or shape of the breast.  

Cytori Therapeutics has developed a new procedure that is beyond typical augmentation. The procedure begins with liposuctioned fat, rich in stem cells and most commonly taken from the abdomen. The fat is broken down with enzymes and separated into stem, regenerative, and fat cells. Stem cells cushioned by some fat cells are deposited next to areas where breast tissue has been removed by surgery.

In less than two days, healthy capillaries and blood vessels surround the injected tissue. The tissue does not lose its shape or size and won’t be rejected by the body’s immune system.

If modified and marketed correctly, Cytori’s breast reconstruction procedure has the potential to do a lot of good. And their target market is multiplying.

Breast cancer diagnoses are on the rise. There are 19 percent more cases of breast cancer today than there were 1975. And survival rates are consistently increasing as well. Many young women who are at high risk of developing breast cancer are making conscious decisions to receive double mastectomies prior to developing cancer, thus lowering their chances of being diagnosed in the future.  

All of these factors have led to a higher number of lumpectomies and mastectomies performed each year.

Cytori is currently in talks with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to get the procedure a clinical trial so that it garners the administration’s approval.

Though the procedure has proven safe so far, I think we should strongly consider the implications a surgery of this nature has on our perception of breast cancer survivors.

Many women today face scrutiny and shame because of their post-op scars, and only recently have there been any campaigns to create acceptance.

Grassroots efforts such as the SCAR Project (Surviving Cancer. Absolute Reality.) are working to not only raise money for cancer research, but also to show survivors in a very honest and empowering light. The project is a series of portraits depicting breast cancer survivors bearing the scars from their operations.  

Society needs to lose the mentality that these women are damaged goods and embrace who they really are — survivors.

With the creation of this breast augmentation procedure there is one more direction from which women will feel pressured to fit in and be “normal.”

I sympathize with women who have beaten breast cancer and want to be closer to what they used to see in the mirror. I also appreciate companies like Cytori who are performing life-changing work that has the potential to reach many women.

I just hope that this advancement can come hand-in-hand with an increased awareness and respect for the women who have survived a horrible disease and are still normal, scars and all.


E-mail: abeander@indiana.edu