Nicole Ritter
PhD Student
- Tissue Regeneration and Organ Printing - TROP (Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, UGent)
- Polymer Chemistry and Biomaterials group – PBM (Faculty of Sciences, UGent)
- Biophysical Models for Medical Applications - BioMMedA (Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, UGent)
Principal investigators: Prof. Phillip Blondeel (MD, PhD), Prof. Sandra Van Vlierberghe (PhD) and Prof. Patrick Segers (PhD)
Research focus
Breast cancer has the highest incidence rate among all cancers but ranks only fifth in mortality. Prevention and treatment frequently include the removal of a breast. It is thus essential to provide breast reconstruction methods that offer satisfying results to patients. Modern reconstruction techniques have drawbacks such as capsular contracture, complex microsurgery or multi-step procedures. Lipofilling suffers from the latter, in part due to the fragility of adipocytes. Additionally, most cases of breast reconstruction require skin expansion. Therefore, it would be beneficial to find ways in which the adipocytes from the lipoaspirate can be protected while also expanding the skin to allow for efficient lipofilling. This research aims at developing and performing a pre-clinical evaluation of a novel degradable implant to improve lipofilling-based breast reconstruction after mastectomy.