Sharon Gerecht, assistant professor in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, has been awarded the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation. The $450,000 prize over five years will help Gerecht in her investigation into how hypoxia, or decreased oxygen, affects the development of blood vessels.

Gerecht’s interdisciplinary research brings together her expertise in stem cell and vascular biology with her background in engineering.  Gerecht said she hopes to discover the mechanisms and pathways involved in the formation of vascular networks, as they relate to embryonic development and diseases such as cancer.

Many medical conditions, such as cancer and heart disease, create areas of decreased oxygen or hypoxia in the spaces between cells. But oxygen is required to maintain normal tissue function by blood vessel networks, which bring nutrients to cells. Likewise, the differentiation of stem cells into more complex organs and structures needs a plentiful supply of oxygen from the vasculature to function.

Gerecht’s study will examine how low oxygen levels impact the growth factors responsible for promoting vascular networks. She also will study the growth of vascular networks in engineered hydrogels that mimic the physical attributes of the extracellular matrix, which is the framework upon which cells divide and grow. Finally, her laboratory will focus on discovering how stem cells differentiate to blood vessel cells and assemble into networks under hypoxic conditions.

She will conduct her research through her role as a project director at the Johns Hopkins Engineering in Oncology Center (EOC), a Physical Science-Oncology Center of the National Cancer Institute. Gerecht is also an associated faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology, which administers the EOC.

Gerecht earned her doctoral degree from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology followed by postdoctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She joined the faculty of the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins in 2007.

The prestigious CAREER award, given to faculty members at the beginning of their academic careers, is one of NSF’s most competitive awards and emphasizes high-quality research and novel education initiatives. It provides funding so that young investigators have the opportunity to focus more intently on furthering their research careers.

Story by Mary Spiro