How amazing would it be to regrow diseased or missing body parts?

I am hopeful it will happen someday, but science is not quite there yet. What is more realistic short-term is to teach your body how to heal faster, and that's precisely what Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler-- an immunologist by trade and former postdoctoral fellow at MIT who’s been selected as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in science-- is working on. More specifically, her potentially groundbreaking research is focused on how the immune system can regenerate functional tissue.

So think of a scar that fully heals itself, leaving that previously wounded area as if nothing happened. Amazing right?

It certainly sounds like science fiction but the process of getting to a major breakthrough like this is brutal. Think, lots of failures, dead ends and questions that lead to other questions. It takes something extraordinary to stick with it and in the process of struggle, lies the possibility of breakthroughs.

Tune in to learn about what it takes to lead groundbreaking discoveries:

What is takes to produce a breakthroughWhat it's like to be a woman in scienceHow to be with failureWhat the path to success looks like

Connect with Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler:

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Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler's biography:

Kaitlyn Sadtler, Ph.D. joined NIBIB as an Earl Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator and Chief of the Section for Immunoengineering in 2019. Prior to her arrival to the NIH, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Daniel Anderson, Ph.D. and Robert Langer, Ph.D., focusing on the molecular mechanisms of medical device fibrosis. During her time at MIT, Dr. Sadtler was awarded an NRSA Ruth L Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellowship, was listed on BioSpace’s 10 Life Science Innovators Under 40 To Watch and StemCell Tech’s Six Immunologists and Science Communicators to Follow. In 2018, she was named a TED Fellow and delivered a TED talk which was listed as one of the 25 most viewed talks in 2018. She was also elected to the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 List in Science, selected as a 2020 TEDMED Research Scholar, and received multiple other awards. Dr. Sadtler received her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where her thesis research was published in Science magazine, Nature Methods, and others. She was recently featured in the Johns Hopkins Medicine Magazine as an alumna of note. Dr. Sadtler completed her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, followed by a postbaccalaureate IRTA at the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology at NIAID.

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Full Transcription:

Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler: If we can understand how the good materials work, then we can engineer further toward really promoting tissue regeneration.

Tanya: That’s Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler, an immunologist by trade and former postdoctoral fellow at MIT who’s been selected as one of Forbes 30 Under 30 in science for her groundbreaking research around how the immune system can regenerate functional tissue. In her TED Talk titled “How We Could Teach Our Bodies to Heal Faster,” she shares details on her research findings, which resonated with millions. More recently, Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler was hired by the National Institutes of Health to lead her own lab and pursue scientific breakthroughs in her field. You have a very interesting segue into the sciences and laboratory space and academia, really. You started off as a veterinarian technician. How was that experience like?

Dr. Kaitlyn Sadtler: I had, really, a great opportunity growing up. I grew up about three miles away from a veterinary clinic back in rural Maryland, and I actually started working there when I was in high school. At the beginning of that, as opposed to what you think of with veterinary technicians drawing blood, things like that,