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.
GSK-3 Beta Activity in Dupuytren's Contracture
Bing Siang Gan MD
2005
University of Western Ontario
Basic Research Grant
Wounds/Scar
This project is important for the following reasons. Firstly, GSK-3p is a key (negative) regulator of B-catenin, a well known transcriptional activating factor of the Wnp/B-catenin signaling pathway. Recent studies from our lab have shown that B-catenin is significantly elevated in Dupuytren's contracture (DC), leading us to hypothesize that a decreased GSK-3B activity may be responsible for the observed elevated levels of B-catenin. Secondly, because current GSK-3B assays are time consuming, require labile radioisotopes and significant amounts of patient material, there is a need for a more rapid, non-radioactive GSK-3p assay that requires minimal patient material to accurately assay GSK-3B activity. Lastly, GSK-3 (in a and p isoforms) is an extraordinary enzyme controlling several fundamental cellular functions that are linked to a number of prominent human diseases, including cancer and diabetes. Consequently, it is anticipated that a functional assay with many key advantages over current time-consuming radioisotope-based assays for GSK-3 would also be of broad fundamental importance to numerous other basic and clinical investigations. For our purposes, however, the development of this new GSK-3 assay will enable us to further study the molecular pathological events underlying Dupuytren's contracture. We expect that elucidation of the molecular pathology of DC may open up new rational avenues for the prevention and treatment of this disease for which currently no non-surgical treatment option exist.