Grants We Funded
Grant applicants for the 2023 cycle requested a total of nearly $4 million dollars. The PSF Study Section Subcommittees of Basic & Translational Research and Clinical Research evaluated nearly 140 grant applications on the following topics:
The PSF awarded research grants totaling over $1 million dollars to support nearly 30 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.
The Influence of Innervation on Tissue Engineered Muscle Fiber Type
Melissa Melvin MD
2008
University of Michigan
Basic Research Grant
Tissue Engineering
Patients with muscle loss and/or localized paralysis could benefit from tissue-engineered skeletal muscle. Using an in vivo model of directed angiogenesis in the rat, we have previously engineered vascularized, neurotized skeletal muscle flaps that exhibit structural and functional characteristics of native muscle, and have the potential for microsurgical transfer on a dedicated vascular pedicle. Being able to influence the phenotypic development (slow- or fast-twitch) of a developing muscle construct would be highly desirable, in order to engineer a specific muscle type for a specific deficit. It is well-known that specific neural innervation patterns are responsible for directing skeletal muscle fiber type development. Therefore, we hypothesize that differential neural input can direct the fiber type of tissue engineered skeletal muscle constructs.