Lung-on-a-chip enables respiratory studies

Researchers at RTI International, in collaboration with The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have developed a lung-on-chip microdevice for laboratory studies of respiratory challenges and therapeutics. Their work has been published in the journal Lab on a Chip.

“The development of this microfluidic lung model, as well as other organs-on-chip, holds the promise of improving the physiological relevance of cellular models for more accurate prediction of the effects of toxicants and drugs on humans, and for reducing the use of animals in medical and pharmaceutical research,” said principal investigator Dr Sonia Grego.

Researchers leveraged microfabrication and microfluidic techniques to achieve a system with three vertically stacked fluidic microcompartments separated by nanoporous membranes, mimicking the structure of airway tissue. They said the device was able to support viable cultures of primary cells, instead of using the more common immortalised cell lines, which “more closely approximate the in vivo biology”.

RTI’s lung-on-a-chip emulates the multilayer airway tissue microarchitecture. In this picture, dyes are flown in the three vertically stacked compartments separated by transparent membranes (shown by the dotted rectangle).

The engineered cell culture enabled interaction between three cell types of the airways and reproduced their physiological interfaces, becoming essentially an organ-on-chip. The cellular model of the airway mucosa could provide insight into biological and pathophysiological effects that conventional cell cultures or animal models do not capture, and help lead to the development of new therapeutics.

“The microfluidic cell cultures reproduced functions of the airway tissues, such as mucus secretion, and acted as a barrier to molecules,” said first author Dr Katelyn Sellgren. “These properties are critical for inhalation toxicology and drug studies.”

The conducting airways are involved in major diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive lung diseases. Dr Grego said the team’s next steps include “studies ranging from exposure to environmental toxicants to pulmonary disease modelling and drug screening”.

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