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.
Migratory Inhibitors For Local Immunosuppression In CTA
Stefan Schneeberger MD
2007
University of Pittsburgh
Basic Research Grant
Composite Tissue Allotransplantation
Although composite tissue allotransplantation (eTA) is of major current interest for reconstruction a variety of defects, there is an urgent need for minimizing toxicity of the required immunosuppressive treatment. The purpose of this project is to develop a novel immunosuppressive regime specifically designed for eTA. The immunosuppressive protocol described here shall prevent acute as well as chronic rejection while avoiding the severe side effects associated with high dose long-term systemic immunosuppression currently used for clinical hand transplantation. The effect of local immunosuppression in the skin as the component representing the primary target for rejection in composite tissue allotransplantation is addressed. Our goal is the inhibition of lymphocyte infiltration and not for inactivation of previously infiltrated lymphocytes while avoiding an immunosuppressive "overkill" and interference with the known tolerogenic effect resulting from the continuous antigen presentation to the recipient of a composite tissue allograft. For this purpose, two novel inhibitors of lymphocyte migration (Efomycine M and B~15-42) have been selected and will be studied for their efficacy in prevention of rejection in experimental models for vascularized skin and limb transplantation. Both compounds act on lymphocyte adhesion, rolling or transmigration. Inhibition of lymphocyte migration into the skin shall ultimately allow for profound reduction or avoidance of systemically applied long term immunosuppression in composite tissue transplantation involving the skin. Along these lines, inhibition of lymphocyte trafficking will be combined with a steroid free immunosuppressive protocol using a depletional polyclonal antibody (ALG) followed by very low dose monotherapy with Tacrolimus for 50 days. This approach provides a clinically oriented protocol for immunosuppression with minimal toxicity in hand transplantation and any other type of eTA that includes the skin.