Samantha Ali, a third-year doctoral student in the University of Florida College of Pharmacy, received the Best Poster Award at this year’s American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists, or AAPS, Annual Meeting. Her work, “Extracellular Vesicle Transcriptomic Analysis for Understanding Muscle Aging under the Influence of Microgravity,” was selected among the top 10% of submissions to the AAPS’s PharmSci 360 section.
Ali, who is mentored by Mei He, Ph.D., an associate professor of pharmaceutics in the UF College of Pharmacy, was recognized at the meeting held Nov. 9-12, 2025, in San Antonio, Texas. She will also present her work during the Best Poster Award session. Being selected for this honor — which was bestowed to only three trainees this year — carries a deep impact for Ali, whose passion for this research surpasses even the Earth’s atmosphere.
“This recognition shines a light on the fascinating world of extracellular vesicles — these tiny, molecular messengers that help us understand how the body adapts to stress, even in space,” she said. “It’s incredibly humbling to have our work recognized by such a respected scientific community. For me, it also validates the beautifully interdisciplinary nature of our research at the UF College of Pharmacy, where engineering, biology and pharmaceutical sciences truly meet. I’m especially grateful to Siobhan Malany, [Ph.D., an associate professor of cellular and systems pharmacology,] and Mei He for mentoring me and giving me the opportunity to explore this project through such innovative tools.”
Ali’s research focuses on extracellular vesicles, or EVs: nano-sized, bubble-like packages that cells release in order to communicate with one another. Ali refers to EVs as “molecular text messages,” packages that carry important information about what’s happening inside a cell. For her winning poster, Ali and her colleagues analyzed EVs released from human skeletal muscle tissue chips that were flown on the International Space Station. By decoding the RNA messages inside these vesicles, Ali’s team discovered molecular signals showing how muscle cells respond to microgravity.
“What’s fascinating is that these same stress signatures overlap with those we see in aging muscles on Earth, so, in a way, the cells time-travel, and EVs give us a snapshot, teaching us how our bodies age, adapt and endure,” Ali said. “It’s powerful to think that what we learn from studying muscle in microgravity could help improve how we preserve muscle health as we age.”
Funding for this collaborative research was provided by the In-Space Biomanufacturing Innovation Hub, which awarded $80,000 to He and Maddalena Parafati, Ph.D., a research assistant professor of cellular and systems pharmacology, to support the study of EVs in microgravity. This one-year collaboration builds upon the NASA SpX25 flight mission to the International Space Station, or ISS, led by Malany and supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the ISS National Lab, which enabled the analysis of extracellular vesicles and RNA responses in space-cultured skeletal muscles.
After Ali graduates with her Ph.D., she aims to build a career in academia, leading her own research lab that bridges EV science with tissue engineering platforms in order to study aging across translational contexts. Ultimately, her goal is to encourage tomorrow’s scientists to approach their work with both courage and curiosity, boldly leading them toward their own creative process of discovery.
“I’m driven by curiosity. I love that EVs let us study what’s happening inside tissues without ever disturbing them; it’s like reading a cell’s secret diary,” Ali said. “Of course, not every day in the lab feels glamorous. Experiments fail, pipettes misbehave, and sometimes your cells simply refuse to cooperate. Yet every unexpected result is a clue to a bigger puzzle. Even when things don’t go as planned, I’m motivated by the thought that each experiment brings us one step closer to understanding how cells adapt and survive under stress.”