At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, two scientists are challenging one of medicine’s most deeply rooted assumptions– that fibrosis is permanent and irreversible.

Dr. Ronit Freeman, a biomedical engineer, and Dr. James Hagood, a pediatric pulmonologist, arrived at the problem of fibrosis from very different disciplines. But both were driven by the same realization: something essential was missing from how the disease was being understood and treated.

Freeman came to fibrosis research during her postdoctoral training, drawn to the microscopic environment that surrounds cells and quietly governs how they behave. “I was studying the environment that surrounds cells and how it guides both health and many different diseases,” she explained. As she dug deeper, it became clear that when that environment becomes imbalanced, it can drive devastating conditions like fibrosis. Rather than focusing only on downstream symptoms, Freeman began asking whether the environment itself could be re-engineered. “To better understand how an imbalance in that environment can cause illnesses like fibrosis, I decided to build a synthetic matrix to manipulate its parts and solve its problems,” she said. That decision would ultimately shape the direction of her career.