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.
Topical Antibiotic Elution in a Collagen Rich Hydrogel for Chronic Wound Healing
Paige Fox MD, PhD
2020
Palo Alto Veterans Institute for Research
Innovation in Wound Care Research & Academic Development Fellowship
Wounds / Scar, Tissue Engineering
Project Summary: Chronic wounds affect 6.7 millions of Americans annually at a high cost to society. Important factors that limit wound healing are bacterial colonization, infection, and biofilm formation. Biofilms are coordinated networks of multiple bacteria that are challenging to treat. Within a biofilm, bacteria work together to help each other survive, grow, and defend against antibiotic treatment. The normal course of treatment for these biofilm challenged chronic wounds includes surgery, frequent dressing changes, and long courses of antibiotic treatment. The long and repeated rounds of antibiotics can lead to antibiotic resistant bacteria making treatment even more difficult. Additionally, these “superbugs” can spread creating dangerous infections with few therapeutic options. Patients deserve better care for these challenging wounds. This project will examine a collagen-rich hydrogel (cHG) to serve as both a wound dressing and antibacterial treatment for chronic wounds. We hypothesize that cHG, previously shown to accelerate wound healing in the absence of infection, can be used as a carrier for local antibiotic delivery to treat biofilm challenged wounds and lead to faster wound healing without the risks of systemic antibiotic treatment. We will examine the rate of antibiotic elution of three effective antibiotics and test the ability of the cHG with antibiotics (cHG + abx) to eliminate bacteria and halt biofilm formation. We will test the safety of cHG + abx against human cells. Next we will evaluate the rate of wound healing in biofilm challenged wounds using cHG + abx versus standard wound care. Lastly, we will mimic the complex bacterial signature of human chronic wounds and test the ability of cHG + abx to treat multiple bacteria simultaneously by delivering multiple antibiotics to the wound topically. Through this project, we will demonstrate the effectiveness of cHG + abx for chronic wound care. Ultimately, cHG could be used at the bedside as personalized treatment for each patient suffering from a chronic wound. The bacteria within the wound would be identified and the appropriate antibiotic therapy determined. Custom cHG + abx would be mixed at the bedside and applied to both accelerate wound healing and eliminate bacteria within the wound. This easy wound care could be performed every other day thereby, simplifying and improving chronic wound care for millions of Americans. Impact Statement: Collagen-rich hydrogel is a unique topical treatment for chronic wounds. This hydrogel can be augmented with antibiotics to accelerate wound healing and defend against bacteria that delay wound closure. By delivering antibiotics locally at the wound site, higher and more effective dosing of antibiotics can be used without the side effects of normal antibiotic treatment. Additionally, targeted antibiotic therapy customized for each patient will limit the need for repeated courses of broad-spectrum antibiotics that lead to multidrug resistant bacteria, also known as “superbugs”. The Centers for Disease Control have identified antibiotic resistance as a major threat to human health. Collagen hydrogel enriched with antibiotics is great way to fight back against the emergence of superbugs.
