Optimal Preservation of Adipose Aspirates for Autologous Fat Transplantation

Autologous fat transplantation (AFT) is a common cosmetic procedure per£onned by plastic surgeons to rejuvenate faces, hands, or other parts of the body secondary to aging. AFT has also been used extensively to correct iITegularities caused by liposuction for aesthetic improvement of body contour and to correct various soft tissue deficiencies of congenital, posttraumatic, or iatrogenic defects. However, the main obstacle to achieve long-tenn favorable results of soft tissue augmentation after AFT is the high rate of absorption in the grafted site, reaching up to 70% of the fined volume. Th,ehigh rate of absorption after AFT often necessitates either overcorrection or repeated procedures in the desired area, causing patient's discomfort, less optimal appearance, higher cost, and morbidity or trauma of the donor site. Liposuction is the most common cosmetic procedure in the United States and is increasing in popularity. At present time, adipose aspirates can only be used for immediate autologous fat grafting during the same setting of liposuction, therefore, adipose aspirates obtainedftom the procedure are usually discarded. It has been a strong desire of both plastic surgeons and patients to preserve the adipose aspirates, if there would be an optimal technique available, for potential future applications. To the best of our knowledge, there are no successful studies on the long-term preservation of autogenous fatty tissues for possible futun~ transplantations. It is our hypothesis that adipose aspirates obtained from routine cosmetic liposuctioh could be preserVed and stored by mea11Sof an optimal cryopreservation technique. The overall objective of this research project is to develop a novel approach (which currently does not exit) to preserv,e adipose aspirates and to bank them for possible future autologous fat transplantations. The specific aims of the present study are (1) to improve our understanding of the fundamental cryobiology of adipocytes; (2) to develop a reliable long-tenn preservation protocol for adipose tissues; and (3) to assess this novel approach .in vitro before future in vivo studies of autologous fat transplantations with preserved adipose aspirates.