Through an animal model, the researchers are looking to determine
how overload leads to tendon disorders, damage to the tissue, and
eventual tears.
Picture the human tendon like a large, stretchy rubber band made of collagen.
“Too much stretch is a bad thing, and the stretch on the collagen can
lead to a breakdown of communication, so the cells can no longer
interpret those mechanical signals from the tendon,” Parreno said. “If
the cells can’t sense the load anymore, it leads to the degeneration of
the tendon.”
On the same day they received notice of the NIH award, Parreno broke a tendon in his finger playing basketball.
“It’s like motivation,” he said with a laugh. “I guess I’m a case in
point. I’ve always been interested in mechanical loading of your tissues
when you exercise, and when you play sports and how your body responds
to that.”
After overloading a key tendon, over the course of four months,
investigators will study the degeneration or changes in its structure,
mechanical properties, and the cellular response.
“Over time, we expect to see the structure of the tendon to become
less organized and its mechanical properties will continually go down,”
Elliott said.
If the trio can determine when the tendon degenerates or fractures,
they can determine the cause and how to prevent these debilitating
injuries. That has clinical implications that interest Silbernagel, who
works with numerous professional teams to help players return to sport
after Achilles tendon injuries.
“These injuries are costly,” Silbernagel said. “Athletes can take a
year to recover, and some can never return to football, and it’s hard to
know how to prevent these injuries because we don’t know when they’re
going to happen. But if we start understanding the pathology, perhaps we
can start thinking about science-based prevention. We currently do a
one-size-fits-all for the tendinopathies and the ruptures. By
understanding more, we can design better treatments for patients.”
Ellen Bloom, a Division I swimmer in college, suffered from that one-size-fits-all approach.
“I suffered from a lot of tendinopathy, and most of the treatments
don’t work,” Bloom said. “I hope after the data collection period is
through, we can really understand the underlying mechanisms of how these
tendon overuse injuries happen.”
Bloom, who’s preparing to graduate from UD with her doctorate in
biomedical engineering in December, did a lot of the work that made this
grant attainable. She received an F31 Individual Fellowship from the NIH that made this possible.
“My thesis on tendon overuse injuries contains a lot of the pilot
data for this grant,” Bloom said. “So, this grant does feel kind of like
my little baby. But it’s also such a huge project, and I’m very proud
of that.”
Bloom and Lin point to Elliott as the driving force behind their
studies. Bloom called Elliott a supportive mentor as she watched her own
transition from an undergraduate to becoming a colleague and
contributor.
“Dawn gave me the confidence in myself as a scientist, but also the
humility to acknowledge that I don’t know everything,” Bloom said. “She
taught me to be open to making mistakes and sometimes that’s how you can
have really exciting science.”
As Bloom prepares to defend her thesis, she’s leaving her work in the capable hands of Elliott, Parreno, Silbernagel and Lin.
“We’re just starting to get to a point in this collaboration, where
we can start to ask new questions,” Bloom said. “I’m excited to see what
they come up with after I leave because it’s a great group and so fun
to see a collaboration where everyone is so invested and so interested
to learn from one another.”
Beyond their intrigue in studying the tendon, all five researchers are equally excited about the interdisciplinary approach.
“We couldn’t do this project without the expertise from the College
of Health Sciences and the College of Arts and Sciences,” Elliott said.
“We all bring a unique skill set, and it’s impossible to do the work
without the collaboration.”
The three faculty and their lab members meet monthly for a journal
club to share their insights and expertise. Parreno finds tremendous
value in interdisciplinary research.
“The students in my lab, they don’t all work on tendon research, and
they feel it’s really eye-opening,” Parreno said. “We’re stuck in the
minutia of the real molecular mechanisms of disease, whereas they’re
focused on a clinical problem, and if there’s more of this
cross-disciplinary collaboration, we can align our research better with a
clinical problem.”
Lin added, “We talk about different articles from our respective
fields. It’s cool seeing things from a pure biological standpoint and
seeing how it translates clinically.”
Silbernagel called the interdisciplinary approach key to success.
“I think more people should listen to people with broader
perspectives,” Silbernagel said. “I train all my students that we’re not
in silos so they understand how all parts of research can help to
inform each other to move ideas forward.”
