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.
Regenerative Capacity of Skin Micrografts
Edward Caterson MD PhD
2011
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Our group has developed a new way to regenerate skin after major burns and other trauma. The basis for this leap forward is that we have developed technology to significantly expand the surface area of skin available for regeneration compared to conventional skin grafting technology. Creating a device to mince skin into small skin micrografts we are able to release migratory cells into the healing milieu. Using this controlled mincing technology a split thickness skin graft can be reliably expanded over one hundred fold in the operating room within minutes from harvest. In pilot wound experiments, we created micrografts (0.8 x 0.8 mm) consisting of epidermis and dermis and transplanted these micrografts into full thickness wounds with an expansion ratio of over 1 to 100 of micrograft to total wound surface area. In these pilot studies 100 % epidermal healing was achieved within 14 days in healthy, as well as diabetic pigs, compared to 62 % and 49 % respectively in healthy and diabetic controls, proving that the regenerative capacity of the skin graft far exceeds what is harnessed in current clinical practice. We have also found that in moist environments the orientation of the micrograft, dermal side up or down, intriguingly is not dependent upon the initial orientation of the skin micrograft within the wound bed. In this proposed research project, we plan to build upon this technology platform by determining the most favorable size of a micrograft to optimize the skin micrograft's regenerative capacity. Moreover, we want to apply this optimized micrograft size to determine the maximum possible expansion ratio of micrograft to total wounded surface area needed to regenerate a full-thickness wound. Early clinical results have confirmed the utility of this method in the treatment of large burn injuries and other complex wound scenarios.