PEMBROKE PARK, Fla. — October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and this year alone, more than 316,000 women in the U.S. are projected to be diagnosed with an invasive form of the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.
A mastectomy is a way of treating breast cancer by removing the entire breast through surgery, but it can take a toll on the patient not only physically, but mentally and emotionally.
John Fisher, a bioengineer at the University of Maryland, was already studying how to help women after a mastectomy when his wife, Gail, got life-altering news.
“My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and ended up having a double mastectomy as part of our treatment strategy,” he said.
It made his team’s work even more personal because he saw firsthand the toll that not only cancer takes, but also the surgery, and how the changes in his wife’s body affected her.
“Having a body that you are comfortable with and that you’re excited with each day is truly important for your overall health and well-being,” said Fisher.
During his wife’s reconstructive surgery, doctors were able to spare her nipple, but for some women, that’s not the case.
“There’s some simple surgical approaches or even a tattooing approach, um, but many folks do end up doing nothing,” he said.
That’s where his team’s research comes in, using 3D bioprinting to create a “nipple-areola complex” or NAC.
“We have a lot of flexibility in how we print the NAC, so we can do things like personalized engineering of the NAC itself,” said Fisher.
In the future, Fisher said he hopes to add cellular components to the NAC, but the research is still ongoing.
“We’d like to, in the short order, kind of build a company around this technology and then go through the FDA process for approval and getting it out to the patient population,” he said.
