How Dr. Steven Cohen Is Using Regenerative Medicine To Progress Plastic Surgery

This veteran craniofacial surgeon is in the process of opening the London Regenerative Institute.

Presented by Luke Lintz

In his decades-spanning career, Dr. Steven Cohen has accomplished many firsts in his field.

He did the first ever facial bipartition with distraction, splitting a patient’s face in half to bring their eyes more together and moving their mid-face forward. He was at the forefront of comprehensively addressing pediatric airway obstruction. He also created a palatal expander-based device that made distraction osteogenesis much more bearable and practical, becoming one of the few founders of techniques that have now become the standard of care. 

He eventually would start the first integrated cosmetic practice in La Jolla, California, one of the first in the world, called FACES+. The curious thing about Dr. Steven Cohen is that he is only getting started. He is a strong fighter against the status quo and a person with a seemingly unlimited drive to help his field of medicine, aesthetics and regenerative medicine move forward. And while he’s done plenty in the craniofacial plastic surgery field, his aesthetic, anti-aging, and regenerative work has a more futuristic aura.

“My main emphasis right now is on complex aesthetic facial surgery and regenerative medicine, and the things we’re doing in regenerative medicine are unique,” he says. “We’ve completely changed how fat grafting is done, from pretending fat is just a natural filler to using fat to replace the material we lose as we age and using the cells in fat like stem cells and other regenerative products like exosomes to regenerate tissue.”

Regenerative medicine is one of the most dynamic and cutting-edge fields of medicine today. With new, current research to develop new and improved healthcare techniques, regenerative medicine promises to revolutionize how we approach medicine and general well-being entirely.

“Ideally, we’ll see the focus shift from not waiting for the disease to come but understanding from genetics, the disease well enough to cut it in its root,” Dr. Steven Cohen says. “So with early diagnosis, you can maybe take chemotherapy for a week; as soon as we detect a speck of cancerous cells in your bloodstream, be on your way.”

Dr. Steven Cohen firmly believes that we’re on the cusp of a significant shift in medicine. His track record in craniofacial surgery already contains plenty of procedures that were impossible to do a generation ago and have now become commonplace. While reconstructive work leads the charge, aesthetics has caught up.

That is why Dr. Steven Cohen is in the process of opening a clinic in the UK called the London Regenerative Institute. Having already built a successful practice with FACES+ in La Jolla, California, Dr. Steven Cohen has a good idea of which approach would guarantee the best results for his patients.

“We’ll be using the comprehensive team care approach again, and it’s necessary to deliver the preventative care correctly,” Dr. Steven Cohen explains. “Contemporary medicine treats you when you’re sick, and we want to prevent you from getting sick. So by combining genetic diagnoses from a swab of your mouth with artificial intelligence programs, doctors can use stem cells and regenerative techniques to help patients.”

Dr. Steven Cohen has already seen studies that promise good results. Stem cells derived from fat cells could regenerate myocardial tissue after being injected into coronary arteries. As a result, the damage from life-threatening events such as a heart attack can be lessened, with more muscle function preserved. OB-GYNs can use similar techniques in some cases to treat infertility by reviving the aged endometrium allowing more reliable implantation of the embryo. The list of possible applications is endless.

“In the aesthetic arena, we can do your bloodwork and see if you’re deficient in homocysteine or your inflammatory markers are telling us that your possibility of having a heart attack in the next five years is 80 percent,” he says. “From there, we start to look at those things to develop dietary programs, exercise programs, and recommendations for supplements that hopefully will help that person avoid or avert or not recur with those situations.”

Of course, seeing how this is comprehensive care, the Institute would also offer aesthetics services ranging from their proprietary stem cell fat grafting technique and deep neck facial surgery, as well as working with top body contouring surgeons in the world and providing integrative medicine with world renown doctors on the team.

Dr. Steven Cohen’s interest and enthusiasm for the groundbreaking future of regenerative medicine don’t end there. He is looking forward to using exosomes as an anti-aging therapy and offering that therapy as a service in his Institute in London.

“The circulating exosomes, which we have in our body, repair injured tissue. So when you’re able to give someone younger exosomes, they have more effect because our cells age, so they’re unable to repair themselves as effectively,” Dr. Steven Cohen says. “These things sound like science fiction; now, they’re around the corner. And they will likely be done in the future at the Institute.”