China Uses Stem Cells for Plastic Surgery Treatments

While most of the stem cell attention in the U.S. centers around the president's executive order to restore federal funding to embryonic stem cell research today, one Chinese hospital has been using stem cells for a unique purpose: plastic surgery.

The Beijing Tiantan Puhua Hospital has been known for its work on Parkinson's patients or those with debilitating spinal cord injuries, but it's now branching out in its uses for stem cells. 

As Beijing City Weekend reports, for about $4,000 dollars, transforms fat cells into treatments that reduce wrinkles.  Patients first have liposuction, and then doctors grow stem cells from the existent fat cells. Two weeks later, the new stem cells are injected to the patient's face, as a way to give the skin a more youthful appearance.  For an additional fee of around $200 each year,  patients can store their stem cells at the clinic for up to 15 years. 

The stem cells come from the patient's own body, so it will not reject the cells, but this probably wouldn't be a good idea for those with cancer, since it could promote the disease to spread more quickly.

So far, many of the patients coming in for these treatments have been South Koreans, partly due to the fact that this procedure was developed by RNL Bio, a Korean company, and the Beijing Tiantan Puhua Hospital is the only place in the world that's using this technique.

Since the stem cells used for the plastic surgery were formed from adult tissues, there are no ethical concerns regarding the destruction of human embryos, but the some of the company's work could technique have its own set of controversies. 

RNL Bio has also been working on a process that offers people the opportunity to clone their favorite household pets using stem cells.  They've already successfully cloned a Pekingese dog for a wealthy American client, marking the first commercial cloning of a small breed of dogs, and are looking forward to more clonings.  For about $150,000 per cloning, this procedure could prove extremely lucrative, but it also brings up ethical questions regarding cloning.

Of course, on the plastic surgery front, it will be interesting to see whether or not they take catch on in the U.S.  With the U.S. plastic surgery industry expected to make a staggering $15.1 billion by 2012, there will probably be some very interested customers.