Brian Gastma, MD PSRC Chair

Dear PSRC colleagues:

I hope all members of our PSRC community are doing well and are using this time to understand how our talents and knowledge can be applied to the challenges before us. We are living and practicing medicine during a historic time. The impacts of COVID-19 and the call to social justice, challenge all of us to work even harder to care for one another and to make our world a better, safer place.

Our leaders have shared with the membership that the impact of not holding the PSRC Annual Meeting this year have been difficult on the Research Council financially. We are fortunate to be an innovative society and have turned this into an opportunity to engage with other groups and industry to transform PSRC into a stronger, more flexible organization.Our Mini Meetings series. These programs are generously supported by industry to not advance a product or a company, but instead to promote research, education, and the importance of the PSRC as a community. Read More

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PSRC would like to extend a sincere thank you to its industry partners for their support of virtual educational programming in 2020!
Fall 2020 virtual programming will be announced soon!

2020 Virtual Abstract Presentations June through September 2020 Sponsored by KLS Martin Also available on PSRC Facebook, Instagram, Twitter

Mini Meeting Session II: Nerve Smackdown July 30, 2020 Sponsored by Axogen Recording available soon

Mini Meeting Session I: Improving Breast Reconstruction Outcomes June 18, 2020 Sponsored by Sientra View Mini Meeting Recording Managing Outcomes in Breast Reconstruction: Expert Experience with the AlloX2® August 20, 2020 Sponsored by Sientra Recording available soon

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Salvatore Giordano, MD, PhD EPSRC Captain 2020

Dear colleagues and friends,
We are excited to announce the next European Plastic Surgery Research Council Meeting has been scheduled for August 26-29, 2021 in Turku, Finland. As I have previously mentioned, this will be a great time to visit Finland. Aside from the great scientific program that we will be putting together over the next several months, we hope you will also have the opportunity to enjoy August in Turku, where the oldest University in Finland was established in 1640 as the Royal Academy of Turku before moving to the new capital in Helsinki. We truly appreciate the support of our sister organization, the Plastic Surgery Research Council, and we look forward to continue working with the program chairs to organize a phenomenal meeting to discuss research, meet new friends, and establish new research connections and collaborations. In the meantime, Christina Radtke and I will be discussing potential webinar lectures from experts and researchers throughout Europe. Have a great summer and stay safe!

Yours sincerely,

Salvatore Giordano, MD, PhD, FACS, EPSRC 2020 Captain

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Michael W. Findlay, MBBS, PhD

Greetings from Australia. We have now set up our research network - the Australasian Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Research Network, to identify key Plastic Surgery researchers across Australasia. We have also recently set up our Clinical Trials Network – The Australasian Clinical Trials network in Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery (ACTPRAS), which focuses on clinically relevant collaborative research (whether translational, clinical trials, PCORI etc.) and we have linkages in North America through the PSRC, England, Wales, Ireland, the Netherlands and with our counterparts in the EPSRC in Europe. I am the director of ACTPRAS and we already have some research hubs set up for collaborative clinical studies here in Australia. We are well-placed to host a combined PSRC- Australasia meeting later this year if there is sufficient interest. While we are still developing, we hope in time to develop a sufficiently engaged cohort to form our own research council.

Sincerely,
Michael Findlay

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Derrick Wan

Paige Fox

Over the past two years, we have worked hard to enhance the PSRC newsletter, expanding several sections and increasing the frequency of publication. We hope you have found these improvements to be engaging and a useful resource. As newsletter editor, I have treasured the opportunity to work with Justin Sacks and Greg Borschel to implement many of these changes, and with Justine Lee to better integrate the newsletter with the revamped PSRC website. I would like to thank all the members of the newsletter committee these past two years and congratulate Paige Fox, who will be taking over as the new editor. I look forward to seeing continued momentum and excitement with the newsletter!

Derrick C. Wan, MD – Newsletter Editor

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Ruth Tevlin, MD

Ruth Tevlin, MD; Plastic Surgery Resident - Stanford University
2020 PSF Research Grant Recipient
I am extremely grateful to be a recipient of this year’s Plastic Surgery Foundation Research Fellowship. This award allows me to spend my professional development year performing dedicated research under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Longaker in the Hagey Laboratory for Pediatric Regenerative Medicine, Stanford University, where I will be studying myofibroblasts and scar/capsule formation. Originally from Dublin in Ireland, I initially took two years out of my residency training at home to complete postdoctoral research with Dr. Longaker from 2013-2015. During this time, I worked on characterization of the mouse skeletal stem cell as well as activation of stem cells in response to injury and in the setting of systemic disease. My postdoctoral fellowship changed my career path significantly and inspired my interest in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. I was delighted to restart my residency at Stanford University in the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery with the goal of becoming an academic Plastic Surgeon. Read More

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Janice F. Lalikos, MD

Janice F. Lalikos, MD
Professor, Clinical Research Director, Division of Plastic Surgery, Department of Surgery
University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts

1. What was your light bulb moment / turning point into research?
After my first year of medical school at Hopkins, I applied and was accepted into the Master’s Program in the Department of Art as Applied to Medicine and did the two degrees in parallel. For the Master’s program, you are assigned a thesis advisor and have to do a scientific thesis that you also illustrate. To this day, this is the only Master’s in Medical Illustration program that demands that level of academic rigor and I hold a special pride to be counted amongst this group of amazingly talented alumni. Anyway, there was a wide range of scientific intensity for these projects, really tailored to the desires of the student and the thesis advisor. My advisor was Paul Manson, M.D. so you could imagine the intensity was on the higher end. Through those sometimes really late nights in the Hopkins Orthopaedic Laboratory (that was run by Mark Randolph), doing a DoD sponsored bone grafting project in a rabbit model, Dr. Manson managed to concurrently inspire me to be an artist, a scientist and a doctor. And has actively fostered my career ever since – there really are no words. Read More

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Functionally Heterogeneous Human Satellite Cells Identified by Single Cell RNA Sequencing
Alvin Wong and Jason Pomerantz – UC San Francisco

In their recent study in eLife published in April 2020, Jason Pomerantz and his group provide a more comprehensive understanding of human satellite cells and their functionally distinct subpopulations. While these cells are relatively homogeneous in normal muscle, activated satellite cells and committed progenitors become more heterogeneous. Nonetheless, pseudotime analysis demonstrated resting muscle satellite cells can still be ordered in various states of transition from stem-like to more differentiated states. Furthermore, using single cell RNA sequencing and flow cytometry, they identify novel surface marker combinations enriched in transcriptional subclusters. Read More

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