IN 2017, MORE THAN A QUARTER MILLION WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES WILL BE DIAGNOSED WITH INVASIVE BREAST CANCER, AND MANY WILL HAVE LUMPECTOMIES AND MASTECTOMIES TO REMOVE THEIR TUMORS AND SOME SURROUNDING TISSUE.
Nanofiber-Hydrogel Composite Material.
Though cancer-free, patients who undergo these procedures often have visible defects, even after painful reconstructive surgery, which uses soft tissue taken from another part of the body.
Unsatisfied with current practices that call for invasive reconstructive procedures, Sashank Reddy and Justin Sacks, two plastic surgeons at Johns Hopkins, teamed with Hai-Quan Mao, now the associate director of the University’s Institute for NanoBioTechnology, and Russ Martin, a postdoctoral fellow in Mao’s lab, to create something better.