![\"Biomedical](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/ameya-narkar-scaffold-on-platform.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n Katie Weimer, a biomechanical engineer based in Colorado, was challenged by her mentor to think bigger \u2014 to use advances in regenerative medicine to \u201cimprove the future of mankind.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n That challenge provided a spark in Weimer. She thought of her mother who died of breast cancer at the age of 50 when Weimer was just 15 years old.\n <\/p>\n
\n All these decades later, Weimer\u2019s mom has never been too far from her heart. With advances in regenerative medicine and lab-created biotissue, Weimer had an idea on how to bring hope to breast cancer survivors around the world.\n <\/p>\n
\n What if there was a way, she wondered, to 3D print bio-friendly breast tissue material that could restore dignity to survivors after a lumpectomy, the targeted removal of the cancerous tissue?\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe reality is so many women must live with a reminder of the cancer they had every single day,\u201d Weimer, 43, said. \u201cThat is not good enough. There must be a better way.\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n \ufeff\u201cMy team and I believe every woman has the right to get a breast reconstruction after cancer treatment \u2014 one that allows a woman to be whole again.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n She also said women deserve an implant that doesn\u2019t \u201ccome with an FDA box warning,\u201d a stringent safety notice the US Food and Drug Administration puts on current implants warning of possible cancer risks.\n <\/p>\n
\n More than 300,000 women<\/a> in the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer every year, according to the American Cancer Society. It remains one of the most common \u2014 and deadliest \u2014 cancers in women, claiming the lives of about 40,000 women annually. Worldwide, an estimated 2.3 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer, with nearly 670,000 dying from the disease every year, according to the World Health Organization<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n For most, treatment requires a lumpectomy or a mastectomy, the removal of all the breast. Some 170,000 lumpectomies<\/a> are performed in the US every year, and about 20% of women need to undergo a second procedure.\n <\/p>\n \n Even when the cancer is removed by lumpectomies, the breast is often left permanently scarred.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cSadly, the standard of care is to treat the disease, but not the deformity,\u201d Weimer said. \u201cDoctors do a good job of removing the cancer, but unfortunately women are left with a divot in their breast. And it has huge psychological impacts on survivors.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Seeking to find a better way, Weimer launched her Colorado startup, GenesisTissue<\/a>, in 2024. The solution she and her team devised: Build 3D-printed breast-tissue \u201cscaffolds\u201d made from advanced, cell friendly bioprintable materials that the body won\u2019t reject. Surgeons would extract a patient\u2019s fat cells through liposuction, inject those cells into the scaffold, and once implanted those cells grow into natural tissue.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe ideal solution would be to implant the scaffold at the time of cancer tissue removal,\u201d Weimer said. \u201cThe scaffold protects the injected fat graft from the pressures and forces of the breast and restores the breast\u2019s shape.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n This reconstruction, Weimer said, would allow a patient\u2019s body to heal itself, from its owns cells, and the scaffold would disappear over time, allowing a survivor to become \u201cwhole again.\u201d It could also allow breast surgeons to play a role in the reconstruction, she said, beyond removing the cancer.\n <\/p>\n \n Every case would be personalized to each individual patient with computer scans providing exact specifics about the tumor size, then that data would be sent to a 3D printer to make the biofriendly scaffold.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s pre-planned and pre-sized to fit the patient. We\u2019re not taking an off-the-shelf component and forcing it to fit,\u201d Weimer said. \u201cThere\u2019s no long-term rejection risk, no worrying about this foreign object in your breast. You\u2019re just left with your own tissue.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Her technology isn\u2019t commercially available yet. Benchtop data and preliminary preclinical data have shown promising results that she hopes will lead to clinical trials.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cAt Genesis Tissue,\u201d she said, \u201cwe are working every day fighting for breast cancer survivors and their right to a breast reconstruction that regenerates into their own breast tissue \u2014 and lasts a lifetime.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n There currently are two types of breast implants approved for sale in the United States: saline-filled and silicone gel-filled. The Food and Drug Administration<\/a> in 2020 issued a boxed warning about how \u201cbreast implants are not considered lifetime devices\u201d and \u201cbreast implants have been associated with the development of a cancer of the immune system called breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Weimer said her personal mantra is that the medical field should \u201cstop implanting industrial materials in human breasts,\u201d especially at a time when the field of bioprinting and regenerative medicine is making huge strides in patient care.\n <\/p>\n \n Breakthroughs in recent years have included a patient in South Korea receiving a landmark 3D-printed windpipe<\/a> built from cartilage and mucosal lining in 2024. At the University of California San Diego, researchers are developing<\/a> \u201cfunctional, patient-specific livers using 3D printing.\u201d Researchers at Penn State University in 2025 received a $3 million federal grant<\/a> to use 3D printers to \u201cuse living cells and biomaterials to build tissue-like structures.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n In the breast tissue space, Harvard researchers<\/a> have been studying ways to utilize 3D printing to make vascularized tissue for breast reconstruction, as have researchers at the French medtech company Lattice Medical<\/a> and Australian innovator Anand Deva<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Weimer acknowledges she\u2019s not the first researcher in this space. She believes all of them \u2014 scientists, engineers, researchers \u2014 are in a shared race of sorts because the demand and need are so critical.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s a movement now,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n \n Weimer has been at the forefront of advanced surgical planning and anatomical modeling, utilizing 3D printing since 2007, first at a company called Medical Modeling and then at 3D Systems. As a biomechanical engineer, she has helped guide surgeons in countless surgeries, printing models that provided better accuracy in the operating room and improved patients\u2019 lives. The most famous case she worked on was the 27-hour separation surgery of Jadon and Anias McDonald, twins born conjoined at the head, documented by CNN in 2016.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n Dr. Oren Tepper, the renowned plastic surgeon who was the lead on the twins\u2019 case, has known Weimer for two decades and has worked with her on multiple surgeries.\n <\/p>\n ![\"Kianna](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/kianna-young-microscopy.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Katie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/161014090835-05-conjoined-twins-1014-20260129152110972.jpg\")
<\/p>\n