학술논문

Small airway-on-a-chip enables analysis of human lung inflammation and drug responses in vitro
Document Type
Report
Source
Nature Methods. February 1, 2016, p151, 10 p.
Subject
Observations
Care and treatment
Inflammation -- Care and treatment
Drug metabolism -- Observations
Immune response regulation -- Observations
Immune response -- Regulation
Language
English
ISSN
1548-7091
Abstract
The development of new therapeutics for chronic respiratory diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which pose a huge public health burden (1), has been hindered by [...]
Here we describe the development of a human lung 'small airway-on-a-chip' containing a differentiated, mucociliary bronchiolar epithelium and an underlying microvascular endothelium that experiences fluid flow, which allows for analysis of organ-level lung pathophysiology in vitro. Exposure of the epithelium to interleukin-13 (IL-13) reconstituted the goblet cell hyperplasia, cytokine hypersecretion and decreased ciliary function of asthmatics. Small airway chips lined with epithelial cells from individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease recapitulated features of the disease such as selective cytokine hypersecretion, increased neutrophil recruitment and clinical exacerbation by exposure to viral and bacterial infections. With this robust in vitro method for modeling human lung inflammatory disorders, it is possible to detect synergistic effects of lung endothelium and epithelium on cytokine secretion, identify new biomarkers of disease exacerbation and measure responses to anti-inflammatory compounds that inhibit cytokine-induced recruitment of circulating neutrophils under flow.