Grants Funded
Grant applicants for the 2024 cycle requested a total of nearly $3 million dollars. The PSF Study Section Subcommittees of Basic & Translational Research and Clinical Research evaluated more than 100 grant applications on the following topics:
The PSF awarded research grants totaling over $650,000 dollars to support more than 20 plastic surgery research proposals.
ASPS/PSF leadership is committed to continuing to provide high levels of investigator-initiated research support to ensure that plastic surgeons have the needed research resources to be pioneers and innovators in advancing the practice of medicine.
Research Abstracts
Search The PSF database to have easy access to full-text grant abstracts from past PSF-funded research projects 2003 to present. All abstracts are the work of the Principal Investigators and were retrieved from their PSF grant applications. Several different filters may be applied to locate abstracts specific to a particular focus area or PSF funding mechanism.
Preservation of Denervated Muscle By Neural Stem Cell Transplantation
Jonathan Winograd MD
2003
Massachusetts General Hospital
Basic Research Grant
Peripheral Nerve
Muscle undergoes rapid atrophy after injury to its supplying peripheral nerve, and frequently fibroses before being reached by regenerating motor neurons. After 12 to 18 months, the severe atrophy and fibrotic scarring prevent any chance of recovery of function even after reinnervation. This is particularly problematic for proximal peripheral nerve injuries, where neurons regenerating at a rate of about 1mm/day may take years to cover the distance between the proximal nerve stump and the target muscle. As a result, upper brachial plexus injuries generally lead to permanent weakness or paralysis of the muscles of the shoulder, arm and wrist. We hypothesize that transplantation of neural stem cells into denervated muscle will provide trophic support to the muscle and preserve the capacity for motor recovery. Furthermore, we hypothesize that stem cell derived motor neurons will form motor end-plates with denervated adult muscle fibers. The ability to form appropriate chemical connections with target cells would support the potential future use of neural stem cells to engineer peripheral nerve. We are encouraged by the recent demonstration of muscle innervation and motor end plate formation by transplanted stem cell derived motor neurons in an avian embryo (Wichterle et al. 2002 Cell 110: 385-97). We propose to investigate whether stem cell derived motor neuron progenitors will innervate paralyzed adult muscle in a mammalian model of peripheral nerve injury.
Dr. Winograd is a reconstructive plastic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed both his general and plastic surgery training at Johns Hopkins Hospital including a two year research fellowship in the Plastic Surgery Research Laboratory. He then went on to do an additional year of fellowship training in Hand and Microsurgery at Washington University in Saint Louis in the Division of Plastic Surgery. His research focus has been the improvement of outcomes following microsurgical repair of peripheral nerve injuries. With grant support from the Plastic Surgery Foundation and ASPS, as well as the Academic Scholar program of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons, he has developed a translational research program which investigates the use of photochemical tissue bonding to decrease scarring at neurorrhaphy sites and better isolate the regenerative environment necessary to promote optimal neural regeneration. He is currently funded by the Department of Defense to further investigate the benefits of this technique combined with large gap peripheral nerve injuries and nerve grafting. Most recently, with the current grant support from PSF, the photochemical tissue bonding is being used to improve microsurgical repair of blood vessels, with the added implementation of a dissolvable glass stent to aid in the technical performance and stabilization of the anastomosis.