June 2025 Awards and Accolades
Congratulations to this month's award recipients on the recognition of your achievements!
Connor Dolan
Connor Dolan, assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences, was recently awarded a 5-year NIH-R01 grant titled, “Understanding the Role of Mechanical Load in Endogenous and Induced Mammalian Digit Regeneration.”
This project investigates how mechanical load influences mammalian digit regeneration, with the goal of improving treatments for limb loss, a condition affecting one in 190 Americans. Current clinical solutions offer limited functional restoration, prompting exploration of alternative regenerative strategies using the mouse digit model. The project builds on findings that bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP2) can induce patterned bone regeneration in otherwise non-regenerative wounds, and that this effect may be scalable to limb amputations. Recent work shows that mechanical load is essential to digit tip regeneration, and that the mechanosensitive ion channel Piezo1 plays a key role. Notably, activating Piezo1 can partially rescue regeneration in mechanically unloaded mice.
The research aims to determine the role of Piezo1 in both anabolic and catabolic phases of regeneration and its expression in specific cell types, quantify mechanical properties of regenerating digits using imaging and modeling techniques and evaluate whether mechanical load (via exercise or Piezo1 activation) enhances BMP2-induced regeneration.
The broader objective is to understand how mechanical cues and growth factors can synergize to promote regeneration in otherwise non-regenerative limb injuries.
Dolan’s lab is interested in mammalian appendage regeneration. Mammals display poor regenerative capabilities and typically respond to traumatic injury with fibrotic wound healing rather than regeneration. Although limited, mice and humans can successfully regenerate the distal tip of their digits following amputation. In the Dolan lab, researchers study this response and subsequently apply their findings to develop pro-regenerative therapies for non-regenerative appendage injuries.