Brittany Taylor, Ph.D., assistant professor and J. Crayton Pruitt Family Term Fellow in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering, has received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) Award.
The award will support Taylor’s research into the cellular mechanisms that drive fibrotic tendon healing, with the goal of improving scientists’ understanding of how cells communicate within the tendon environment following injury or disease.
Healthy tendons contain a highly organized extracellular matrix, or ECM, that provides structural support and allows tendons to efficiently transmit force between muscle and bone. Following injury or disease, that organization can break down as the tendon heals through the formation of stiff, fibrotic scar tissue. The resulting tissue can be mechanically weaker, impair function and increase the risk of reinjury.
Researchers still do not fully understand the cellular interactions that initiate and drive this fibrotic remodeling. Taylor’s CAREER project will focus on extracellular vesicles, or EVs, small particles released by cells that transport proteins, nucleic acids and other biological signals between cells.
Her research will investigate how changes in the tendon microenvironment, including matrix structure, mechanical loading and inflammation, affect the release and function of EVs and how those signals influence neighboring cells during tendon healing.
To study these interactions, Taylor will engineer three-dimensional biomaterial systems that mimic healthy and fibrotic tendon environments. These models will allow her team to examine how the tendon matrix affects cell behavior, characterize changes in EV signaling under different mechanical conditions and determine how EV-mediated communication may contribute to the progression of fibrosis.
“One of the major challenges in tendon healing is that we still do not fully understand how cells communicate with one another as the tissue responds to injury,” Taylor said. “This CAREER Award gives us the opportunity to build physiologically relevant models that allow us to study those interactions in a controlled way and identify mechanisms that may ultimately help us better understand and improve tendon repair.”
The work could also have implications beyond tendon injury. By identifying how EV-mediated communication contributes to fibrotic remodeling, the research may provide new insight into fibrosis in other tissues and help inform future approaches to EV-based diagnostics and therapeutics.
The CAREER project integrates Taylor’s research with an education and outreach program designed to increase awareness of musculoskeletal science, health and research across the lifespan. This program is grounded in the premise that, just as cellular behavior and function are shaped by the surrounding microenvironment, humana are shaped by the education and information exchange within their environments.
Taylor and her team will partner with local community organizations to host a K-12 summer engineering camp focused on musculoskeletal research. Graduate students in her Musculoskeletal Biomedical Engineering course will participate in a science communication project aimed at explaining musculoskeletal disease and its societal impact to community audiences. The team will also develop educational workshops for older adults focused on the role of exercise and movement in maintaining musculoskeletal health and wellness.
Together, the activities are designed to increase public understanding of the impact of musculoskeletal conditions, expand exposure to STEM and musculoskeletal research among young students and help researchers communicate their work more effectively to the communities it may ultimately benefit.
The NSF CAREER Program supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education. CAREER awards support faculty who integrate research and education while building a foundation for long-term leadership in their fields.