After 10 years of fundamental and preclinical research lead by Distinguished Professor Dietmar W. Hutmacher’s interdisciplinary team, a world-first breast implant trial in Australia aims to provide a safer alternative to permanent silicone implants.
The interdisciplinary research team from HBI, BellaSeno, QUT, CBCI (and many other partners), developed a ‘scaffold guided tissue engineering conception’ from bench to bedside’. The implementation trials are currently taking place at Metro North Health in Brisbane!
So, what’s new?
Well, put simply, scientists use a cutting-edge 3D printer technology to manufacture a biodegradable scaffold that guides the biological regeneration of a woman’s breast. The highly porous scaffold is made from the same group of medical grade biomaterials used for dissolvable sutures used in millions of patients every day.
Surgeons explanted a silicon implant which the patient received more than a decade ago and implanted the biodegradable in combination with patients own tissue scaffold in the same surgery session. The scaffold acts as a structural guiding template for the patient’s own tissue and after 3-4 years after implantation, the scaffold will completely resorbed by natural process similar as by bioresorbable sutures.
Once dissolved, the patient’s own newly-formed tissue will remain where the scaffold once was. This solution aims to prevent the complications or illnesses that occur as a result of silicone breast implants.
To learn more about this innovation, you can visit the following links and view the embedded videos:
- Original ABC News Article
- ABC News Broadcast 1:
- ABC News Broadcast 2:
- 7 News Broadcast:
BEST is pleased that parts of its own health-related behavioural economics research program is linked to the research of Distinguished Professor Dietmar W. Hutmacher, Professor Owen Ung, Professor Michael Wagels and the entire interdisciplinary team.
You can also learn about BEST’s involvement in this project from the perspective of innovation adoption and uptake by following THIS LINK. BEST have conducted a range of studies to investigate the behavioural biases experienced in regenerative medicine markets, the customer experience in the breast augmentation context and the therapy choice decision in breast reconstruction surgery.
This press release is based on the original article from ABC NEWS.