Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, September 19, 1995 TAG: 9509190054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ANN ARBOR, MICH. LENGTH: Medium
The experimentation is years behind other substitutes for silicone that use vegetable fats and oils, but supporters note that this technique doesn't permanently leave foreign substances in the body.
``We've been trying to outsmart the body's immune system. These fellows have come up with a concept that works with it,'' said James Martin, research director at Carolinas Medical Center. The experiments were begun last fall at the Charlotte, N.C.-based hospital and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Silicone has been blamed by hundreds of thousands of women for serious immune system diseases. In 1992, the Food and Drug Ad- ministration banned purely cosmetic silicone implants; the procedure is still available for cancer and other medical reasons.
If early work on laboratory animals succeeds, the researchers, within three to five years, will remove a tissue sample from somewhere in a woman's body, use it to grow additional cells in the lab, then implant the cells in the woman's breast. There they should multiply and mature into real breast tissue.
The only comparable procedure now in existence involves removing a woman's abdominal tissue to reconstruct breasts, an operation that is complicated, risky and often causes scarring, said Dr. Michael Miller, an associate professor of plastic surgery at the University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The researchers' aim is to help women who have undergone mastectomies after breast cancer. But the method also could be used for cosmetic breast enlargements.
This year, the scientists are trying the treatment in laboratory rats. Next year, they plan to try it on pigs.
by CNB