The Plastic Surgery Foundation
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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.

Smart Scaffolds for Soft-Tissue Engineering

Principal Investigator
Julio Clavijo-Alvarez MD

Year
2004

Institution
University of Pittsburgh

Funding Mechanism
Basic Research Grant

Focus Area
Tissue Engineering

Abstract
An ideal soft tissue substitute for reconstructive and aesthetic surgery has still not been identified. Alloplastic implants are prone to complications such as extrusion, infection, and capsular contracture. Autologous fat transplantation will undergo resorption. Tissue flap reconstruction is effective in many cases, but still has inherent donor site morbidity. A durable tissue engineered implant using a patient's own cells may represent a better clinical option. While preadipocytes can be induced to differentiate in-vitro with the use of an adipogenic medium, these cells would not be exposed to the same concentration of growth factors when implanted in-vivo. Therefore, many cells may survive as undifferentiated precursors instead of forming new fat tissue. Our group has developed a novel polymer scaffold that incorporates the adipogenic growth factors from our differentiation medium and releases these factors to the adherent cells during degradation. This would allow implantation of preadipocytes on a scaffold that not only provides structural support, but also stimulates the surrounding cells to an adipocyte phenotype. The polymer is designed so that the release of growth factors during degradation correlates with the time period required for adipocyte differentiation. The purpose of this study is to engineer a soft tissue implant using human preadipocytes seeded on a biodegradable polymer scaffold that integrates growth factors in its chemical structure.