Bioengineers at the Rice University collaborated on a six-year study that methodically examined how the surface architecture of breast implants is influencing the development of negative impacts, including an extraordinary lymphoma type.

A SciTech Daily report specified that every year, roughly 400,000 people in the United States are getting breast implants.  

According to the Food and Drug Administration data, most of those breast implants should be replaced within 10 years because of the buildup of scar tissue, as well as other complications.

A research team, including those from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rice, the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Baylor College of Medicine, published the findings of their study, The surface topography of silicone breast implants mediates the foreign body response in mice, rabbits, and humans, in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

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The 6-Year Study

According to bioengineering assistant professor Omid Veiseh, Rice, who started the research six years ago during a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, an implant's surface photography drastically impacts the manner the immune response is perceiving it, and this has essential ramifications for the design of implants.

The assistant professor added, they are hoping their paper would be able to provide a foundation for plastic surgeons to assess and further understand how implant choice can impact the experience of patients.

Additionally, the results were co-authored by other researchers including co-lead authors, John Hopkins University's Veiseh and Joshua Doloff, MIT's Robert Langer, and two of the collaborators of Veiseh, from the Texas Medical Center, Courtney Hodges of Baylor, and Mark Clemens of MD Anderson.

Human Effect

Veiseh, whose laboratory is focusing on developing and examining biocompatible materials explained, he is particularly excited about the finding that surface architecture can be adjusted to lessen host immune reactions and fibrosis to breast implants.

The assistant professor also said "There's a lot we still don't understand" about the manner the immune system is orchestrating its reaction to implants, and it is indeed, essential to understanding the biomaterials' context.

He continued that research after he joined the faculty of Rice in 2017 as a CPRIT Scholar from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.

He, together with Amanda Nash and Samira Aghlara-Fotovat, two Ph.D. students from his lab, collaborated on the study with the research groups to correlate findings from MIT animal studies with clinical data from human patients.

Clinically, Clemens, a plastic surgery associate professor at MD Anderson who spearheads a multidisciplinary treatment team on the disease explained, they have observed that patients exposed to textured-surface breast implants can develop BIA-ALCL or breast implant-associated large cell lymphoma, as described in the MD Anderson site, although this has not taken place with smooth-surface implants.

This research, he added, gives essential novel understandings into cancer pathogenesis with clear implications for averting disease before it progresses.

Veiseh explained, the work provided essential hints too, that will lead to follow-up research. That is the most thrilling part of this, he said adding that it could result in safer, more compatible biomaterials and implant designs.

Safer Breast Implants

Following their studies on animals, the researchers analyzed how human patients react to various types of silicone breast implants by collaborating with MD Anderson on the assessment of tissue samples from BIA-ALCL patients.

They discovered evidence of the similar immune response types seen in animal studies. For instance, they observed the tissue specimens from patients that had been host to extremely textured implants for several years exhibited indications of chronic, long-term immune reactions. They found too, that scar tissue was thicker in those who had more highly-textured implants.

Veiseh explained, conducting across-the-board comparison in rabbits, mice, and then in tissue samples of humans, really offers a much stronger and more significant body of evidence about how these are compared to one another.

The researchers explained, they are hoping their datasets would help other researchers in optimizing the design of silicone breast implants, as well as other types of medical silicone implants for further safety.

Langer, the study's senior author and professor at MIT's David H. Koch Institute said, they are pleased that they were able to bring new materials in science procedures to better understand problems of "biocompatibility in the area of breast implants".

He added, they are hoping that the studies they carried out would be broadly useful in understanding how to design any type of implants that are safer and more effective.

Related information is shown on the FDA's YouTube video below:

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