David Otterburn
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
After a mastectomy, surgeons often rebuild breast shape by moving a patient's own fat from one part of the body to another, a procedure called autologous fat grafting. The frustrating part is that no one can reliably predict how much of the transferred fat survives: reported loss ranges from 10% to 50%.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biomedical Engineering
Physiology
- Topics
autologous fat grafting
lipoaspirate
breast reconstruction
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Compare volume and projection retention of human lipoaspirate processed by active closed wash and filtration, a passive low pressure closed system, or active wash and filtration plus surfactant, after injection into the dorsa of immunocompromised mice at 1, 2 and 3 months.
- Characterize the cellular microenvironment in and around each graft at 3 months, including immune and inflammatory responses and the viability of the grafted fat, for each processing technique.
- Measure potential hormonal activity of the processed fat, specifically estrogen-producing proteins, given that grafts are placed near tissue that often harbored estrogen-responsive breast cancer.
- Compare mouse graft retention and complication profiles with those of the same patients in the companion randomized controlled trial, and pilot the model in humanized mice, assessing immunogenicity by measuring angiogenesis in the grafts.
More about the research
Several devices exist to clean and prepare the fat before it is injected, but no randomized controlled trial has compared them, so surgeons choose based on preference. Just as important, little is known about what each processing method does to the tissue at the cellular level, which may be what actually determines whether a graft takes or a complication follows.
Why it matters
Breast reconstruction patients currently face unpredictable fat graft survival and repeat procedures, and surgeons have no evidence-based guidance on which processing device to use. By pairing mouse measurements with outcomes in patients from a companion randomized trial, this work could inform best-practice guidelines. Measuring estrogen-producing proteins in processed fat placed near formerly estrogen-responsive cancer could also directly influence surgical practice.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Yaguang Xi
University of Georgia, GA·Pharmacology
Determine how the oncogenic microRNA miR-10b and its target gene NR4A3 contribute to the experimental compound LG007's activity against triple-negative breast cancer.
Brandon Tefft
Medical College of Wisconsin, WI·Biomedical Engineering
Identify signaling pathways that let a subset of endothelial cells stay attached under blood-like shear stress, using RNA sequencing to compare gene activity in all cells versus cells that remain attached.
Laura Van Winkle
University of California-Davis, CA·Physiology
Define the dose–response relationship and acute injury pattern for inhaled chloropicrin and phosgene in mice, including establishing the LC50 and identifying injured cell types in conducting airways and olfactory epithelium.
The school
Weill Medical College of Cornell University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $1.6B a year on research, 59 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.