ABSTRACT
. The ability to successfully reconstruct breast tissue using tissue engineering methods, however, has been limited to date because of an inability to produce large amounts of engineered adipose tissue that retain volume and remain viable over time. The development of a clinically translatable method of engineering adipose tissue for breast reconstruction requires the investigation of several components. The bovine mammary gland consists of comparable anatomical structures and tissue types as that of the normal human breast. A histological evaluation reveals that bovine mammary tissue is more similar to that of humans than is mammary tissue of traditional animal models such as mice and rats. The injectable tissue-engineered devices were implanted intradermally, not in the mammary gland, to determine if the cells that were implanted in our device had the capacity for stimulating adipose tissue formation and to better distinguish new adipose tissue from native adipose tissue post implantation since adipose tissue is not normally found within the skin.
