In a medical breakthrough, Australian surgeons have managed to regrow breast tissue for women who have had cancer surgery.

They say in one patient, breast tissue was successfully grown from her own fat cells.

It is hoped regrowing breasts after a mastectomy could one day become an alternative to silicone implants.

Tanya Downs was just 36 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago.

She says her life changed when she found out she needed a mastectomy.

"I was shattered. I never thought it would happen to me. It just seemed unbelievable at the time," she said.

"Losing my breast was hard. I think for a younger woman it's still part of who you are and I think you're still trying to find that place where you're comfortable and to sort of lose that, it's a lot to do with your self image as well and how you view yourself," she said.

After undergoing a mastectomy, many women choose to have a breast reconstruction.

Breast surgeon Professor Christobel Saunders says the options available include silicon implants, or a more complex procedure that uses flesh from somewhere else in the body.

But Professor Saunders says no procedure is perfect.

"They will always look different. They feel different as well and some very important research that we published recently was not only how women looked but how they felt after reconstructive surgery and that completely different feeling was something they noticed," she said.

"Their breast was no longer part of them and in fact we do say to women it's not a breast you're getting, it's a reconstruction of a breast."

Many women, like Tanya Downs, find that after their surgery they need follow-up procedures.

"I'm supposed to have another surgery already because one of mine's moved," she said.

"It's moved right around to the side which cosmetically is not attractive and it's not symmetrical, but more so it sort of sits under my arm so it's uncomfortable."

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New hope

But now there is hope for new treatment after Melbourne surgeons managed to regrow breast tissue in a mastectomy patient, after a pilot trial involving five women.

Surgeons implanted each woman with an acrylic breast-shaped chamber. They then redirected blood vessels into the space, attached with the patient's fat cells.

Professor Wayne Morrison is head of the research team at the O'Brien Institute.

"If you put that living tissue inside that space, then that tissue attempts to expand to fill up the space. Nature doesn't like to have empty spaces," he said.

"We were trying to get tissue to grow to reproduce a simulated breast or to grow tissue to fill up the space where the breast was."

The process was only successful in one of the five women involved in the trial, but Professor Morrison still says it is an exciting step.

"It proved the principle that if you do put a small tissue in a space it can expand in humans and fill the space," he said.

He says it is the first time this sort of growth has happened in a human.

"This is spontaneous growth. This is not involving inserting stem cells or fat injection or anything like that. It's actually simply transferring tissue," he said.

More research needed

But Professor Morrison says despite the single success story, there is more research to be done.

"It is surprising how dramatic this amount of tissue is that's formed. There are things that we don't understand as to what is actually driving this tissue to expand," he said.

The research team will now look at further basic research before any more human trials are attempted.

"There are other things that we're going to need I think to make this, to perfect this technique, but it's a key milestone in the progress of trying to develop this project," Professor Morrison said.

He says the research could also lead to other applications.

"The biology of this we don't fully understand but it is a first step in and one of the steps that I think are key to tissue engineering in general and it's based on research studies at the O'Brien Institute on tissue engineering and it has applications, not only for potential substitutes for breast, but growing any kind of tissue in a three-dimensional way, such as organs and things which we're also very much involved with," he said.

Dr Christobel Saunders says it gives hope to breast cancer sufferers.

"For women this could be a wonderful step forward in being to have their own tissue fairly easily put into the area and make a new breast that really does feel a lot more like them," she said.