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.
Ultrasonic Harvest of Adipose Tissue for Cell Therapies
Bret Schipper MD
2006
University of Pittsburgh
Basic Research Grant
Tissue Engineering
Cell based therapies using autologous adipose tissue may represent the future of regenerative medicine. In the most basic and time tested form, mature adipocytes and small parcels of surrounding tissue are harvested by standard suction lipectomy and transplanted to another anatomic location. In recent years, the regenerative potential of adipose precursor cells that reside in adipose tissue has been demonstrated and holds promise for clinical reconstructive strategies. These adipose derived stem cells (ASC's) can be isolated from whole fat tissue or lipoaspirate. Also in recent years, the popularity of ultrasonic liposuction techniques has increased. Newer generation devices are able to apply energy in a more efficient and focused manner. Since ultrasonic liposuction devices rely on cavitation to extract adipose tissue, the viability and function of harvested cells has been questioned. Preliminary data from our laboratory suggests that high numbers of viable mature adipocytes and ASC's can be harvested by ultrasonic techniques. We hypothesize that ultrasonic fat extraction will yield cells equivalent in number and function to standard liposuction.