UC Irvine

Adipose tissue grafting is quickly becoming a common practice in plastic surgery. The recent discovery that adipose tissue contains stem cells has also fueled substantial interest in the technique for regenerative medicine. However issues with necrosis and variability of graft retention have remained problematic. Cell death occurs due to lack of nutrients, with oxygen being the most vital. Studies have shown that adipose tissue can only survive up to 3 days in hypoxic conditions. The success of an adipose graft is a race between angiogenesis and cell fitness under hypoxia. Current methods to address necrosis focus on harvesting and preparing cells to have a high survival rate in hypoxic conditions. We believe that bathing the tissue graft in a microbubble solution will enhance its viability over time. The nanobubbles function as an initial reservoir of additional oxygen for the cells to take up as needed. In addition, these nanobubbles can also activate several processes responsible for angiogenesis, and general cell function. In our lab, we have created an efficient device that can deliver gas micro and nanobubbles into solution. We feel that in combination with this device, we can quickly and efficiently increase graft viability and future graft retention over time. The addition of microbubbles during processing, provides a measurable reduction in the time cells spend under hypoxic conditions and thus increase the survival rate of cells and the retention rate of grafts