Two plastic surgeons spill everything you need to know about the buzzy treatment
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There’s an inherent spookiness to the intersection of science and aesthetics. We happily stab ourselves with neurotoxins, siphon and reinject our own blood like mad scientists, and crack our noses to shape them smaller. Cosmetic treatments are akin to elective body horror—violent delights as a means to a physically pleasing end.
Case in point: a new class of cadaver-derived body injectables (as in, from dead people) is quickly rising in popularity. Searches for AlloClae , one such injectable fat matrix derived from human tissue, are up 1,300 percent in three months, and up by over 5,000 percent versus the same period last year, according to Google Trends. People are curious about the unique benefits of this so-called “zombie BBL”—and plastic surgeons are more than happy to oblige.
“AlloClae is a donor-derived human adipose tissue product. In very simple terms, it is processed human adipose tissue that can be used to restore or augment soft-tissue volume without requiring the patient to undergo liposuction to harvest their own fat,” says Melissa Doft , a plastic surgeon in New York. “The material contains non-viable adipose tissue and extracellular matrix, so it provides a structural scaffold, rather than functioning as a transplantation of living fat cells.” Doft says that distinction from traditional fat transfer is interesting from an aesthetic standpoint: “We can use it for areas where we want to restore or refine soft-tissue contour—such as localized contour irregularities, hip dips, certain breast contour deficiencies or asymmetries, and selected areas of volume loss.”
It’s also particularly handy for patients on a GLP-1, or anyone who doesn’t have enough of their own body fat to harvest through liposuction. “That creates an interesting middle ground in aesthetic surgery: we have something that can provide soft-tissue volume and contour correction, but without requiring the patient to undergo the harvesting component of a traditional fat-transfer procedure,” Doft adds.
Before we dive deeper into the treatment, let’s address the dead body in the room. “There has been some uproar about where the fat is sourced,” says Usha Rajagopal , a plastic surgeon and the medical director of San Francisco Plastic Surgery and Laser Center. “It is sourced from donated cadaver fat tissue. When someone donates a body, our goal is to use it thoughtfully and effectively, so we use all tissue parts. Obviously, major organs are immediately harvested, but there are also people who donate their bodies where those organs may not be ready for harvest. Skin, retinal tissue, and cartilage are then harvested. These are used as skin grafts, and tendons and cartilage can be donated and used in other surgical procedures.”
Donated human tissue is not uncommon in rhinoplasties and other plastic surgeries, as well as in ACL reconstruction and hernia repair. But Doft stresses that AlloClae is a far more advanced product than just cadaver fat in a tube. “The donor tissue is obtained through an established tissue-donation system, with donor screening and testing for relevant transmissible diseases. The tissue is then processed and sterilized before it becomes the final product. Importantly, the adipocytes in the final product are nonviable,” she says. “We…