The International Society of Plastic Regenerative Surgery, New Frontiers and Horizons in Tissue Regeneration in Berlin June 7-9, 2013.

Dr. Cohen’s talks centered on Regenerative Facial Surgery for Aesthetics and for Craniofacial Applications and Research on Cellular Health of Fat Grafts with Different Processing Devices.

Dr. Cohen is passionate about the potential of the body’s own tissues to help restore function and appearance. His clinical work in the field has helped gain greater understanding of the place of these therapies in Plastic Surgery.

Many are not familiar with how stem cells and other regenerative cells can be obtained from liposuction fat and why they are being used in medicine. In brief, when our bodies are injured, a variety of cells “home” to the injury to repair the wound and allow healing. In some cases, where there is disease or diminished blood supply, it might be necessary to supplement the body’s own healing abilities, by getting more of these cells and delivering them to the injured site. For instance, when someone has a heart attack, the blood supply to the heart muscle is blocked and that portion of heart muscle is injured. Once blood supply is restored, we are able to do little to treat the muscle injury so many patients will go on to develop heart failure from the dead muscle’s loss of function. If we deliver these cells obtained from liposuction fat into the coronary artery after it is unblocked and stented, the muscle injury is reduced and the amount of dead heart muscle is lessened. This is just one example of how stem and regenerative cells found in our fat can be used to treat disease.

These newer applications promise to change the way medicine is practiced in many difficult to treat diseases. Dr. Cohen is working with a team of scientists, clinicians and businesspeople to make some of these therapies reality.