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.
PEG Hydrogels to Engineer Cartilage
Anestis Papadopulos MD
2006
Massachusetts General Hospital
Basic Research Grant
Tissue Engineering
Cartilage possesses limited capacity for repair and self-regeneration. Consequently, injury to cartilage in the articulating joints results in scar formation and possible arthritic changes that can lead to loss of structure and function. Many approaches have been explored over the years to heal damaged cartilage. Traditional therapies include autogenic and allogenic implants in which the former is limited mainly by donor site morbidity, whereas the latter poses a risk for disease transmission. Autologous chondrocyte implantation is a promising therapy but its success is limited by the defect size and location. A new approach is tissue engineering where cells on or in a degradable scaffold can permit new matrix formation specific to the defect site. Previous studies have evidenced the production of extracellular matrix by chondrocytes photoencapsulated in fibrin hydrogels. More recently, we have studied the use of various degradable, photoreactive and crosslinkable polymers as scaffolds for cartilage tissue engineering such as poly (ethylene glycol) (PEG). Based on these results, the hypotheses of this work are: 1) Photochemical crosslinking of PEG can be used to generate a hydrogel that permits cartilage formation by encapsulated chondrocytes and 2) Chondrocytes in PEG hydrogels have the capacity to form neocartilage with improved biochemical and biomechanical properties for cartilage repair. To test these hypotheses, we have designed experiments to address the following aims: Aim 1: To evaluate novel biomimetic hydrogels formed from PEG that permit encapsulation of chondrocytes. This first step will test various concentration ratios of degradable and nondegradable forms of the polymer tailoring the degradation of resulting hydrogels on cell survival in the gels. Aim 2: To employ these photocrosslinked hydrogels to stimulate chondrogenesis by chondrocytes in vivo. These photocrosslinked hydrogels will be used to encapsulate chondrocytes to evaluate their ability to form new cartilage matrix in mice and to validate biocompatibility and their potential for chondrogenesis in vivo.