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.
Optimizing biomimetic implant repair of craniofacial bone defects
Edward Davidson MD
2010
New York University School of Medicine
Pilot Research Grant
Cranio / Maxillofacial / Head and Neck, Tissue Engineering
The replacement of osseous tissue lost through trauma, disease or congenital anomalies is a continuing clinical challenge. Craniofacial bone defects are often large and characterized by complex geometry. The ideal reconstructive implant should be a fully osteointegrative biomimetic replication of native bone, fashioned into defect-specific geometry. Current biomimetic implants have recapitulated only the bony matrix, hydroxyapatite. Such implant technology has limited bone in-growth, healing only small intercalary defects. The long term objectives of this study are to develop customized defect-specific implants, and to investigate strategies to ensure osteoinduction, osteoconduction, and osteointegration throughout the implant by optimization of biomimicry to include the cellular and lacunocanalicular fluid flow components of native bone. Firstly, we develop a CT-guided computer aided design microprinter to machine made-to-measure hydroxyapatite tricalcium phosphate matrices. We then establish a 'critical size implanted defect' in a rat calvaria model. Subsequently, our third aim is to improve healing of this defect through progenitor cell seeding of the matrix. Finally, we aim to show that suction mediated increases in lacunocanalicular flow through the cell-seeded matrix and surrounding bone upregulates the mechanotransductive-osteogenic pathway to create an implant that overcomes an otherwise critical size defect.
We expect that this technology will be scalable to enable high throughput production of geometrically complex customized implants that successfully restore functionally debilitating and socially incapacitating craniofacial skeletal deficiencies. We aim to improve bone repair and regeneration in order to heal larger osseous defects than have ever been healed before. These implants are a full recreation of native bone and epitomize the next paradigm shift in osseous reconstruction.
Edward H. Davidson received his medical education at the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London. He spearheads the New York University Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery Laboratories’ division of bone biology research with interests including craniofacial surgery, bone tissue engineering, and the role of lacunocanalicular flow in distraction osteogenesis.