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.
Inside-Out Tissue Engineering for Hepatic Replacement
Geoffrey Gurtner MD
2006
Stanford University
Basic Research Grant
Tissue Engineering
Replacement organs are critically needed for patients suffering from a multitude of diseases. At present, the only option for these patients is organ transplantation with the attendant problems of donor scarcity and life-long immunosuppression. Tissue engineering holds the promise of creating replacement organs outside the human body. However, two major obstacles have hindered the development of techniques to fabricate replacement organs: 1.) the inability to adequately vascularize tissue constructs in vitro and 2.) the inability to re-integrate these tissues into the systemic circulation. Tissue engineering approaches based on the implantation of cells onto resorbable matrices have had success in replicating simple, relatively avascular structures such as cartilage and bone, but have been unable to create more complex parenchymal organs, such as liver. Despite the obvious promise that stem cell technology holds to "patch" or "regenerate" partially damaged organs in vivo, it is difficult to envision the creation of new organs in vitro using existing methodologies. To solve this problem we have taken explanted microcirculatory beds (EMBs) as the foundation for the fabrication of autologous, vascularized neo-organs in vitro. This microsurgical approach starts with the vascular system as the scaffold and builds tissue from the "inside-out" when compared to existing paradigms of tissue engineering. In this grant, we will use this approach in combination with embryonic stem cells to create a functional autologous liver in vivo which can reliably replace hepatic function in an animal model of liver failure.