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'Lung-on-a-Chip' Capable of Accurately Replicating Natural Lung

by Amar Toor on June 25, 2010 at 05:10 PM

Researchers at Harvard and the Children's Hospital in Boston recently combined lung and blood vessel cells with microchip technology to create what they've dubbed a "lung-on-a-chip." It may sound like the name of a cannibalistic afternoon snack, but the new gadget reportedly behaves and reacts like real lung tissue, and could radically change the way in which medical researchers study human lungs.

David Ingber, the vascular biologist leading the work at Harvard, told the Guardian that his team's device could accurately mimic the inflammatory response triggered by pathogens, and that it could fully absorb airborne nanoparticles. Researchers are hopeful, then, that they'll be able to use the lung-on-a-chip to study the effects that drugs and toxins have on the respiratory system without ever having to open up a human body. Ingber even predicts that the device, and those like it, "could replace many animal studies in the future."

Meanwhile, researchers over at rival school Yale recently pulled off a pretty remarkable medical feat of their own, after successfully growing real lung tissue capable of performing many of the organ's natural functions. The scientists extracted lungs from adult rats, and removed all the cells. They then injected newly generated cells into the remaining network of airways, and implanted the lungs back into the rats for up to two hours at a time.

"We succeeded in engineering an implantable lung in our rat model that could efficiently exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, and could oxygenate haemoglobin in the blood," explains Laura Niklason, who led the research. "This is an early step in the regeneration of entire lungs for larger animals and, eventually, for humans." Niklason, though, cautions that it may take several years before the lung could be implanted in humans.

Both studies, which are published in the most recent issue of the journal Science, may advance different aspects of pulmonary research and treatment, but they clearly share a common thematic thread. As technology continues to sharpen its ability to replicate human and biological processes, medical research can only become easier, and, in the long run, substantially more productive. [From: The Guardian and Science]

Tags: artificial lungs, ArtificialLungs, harvard, health, lungs, medical, organs, research, respiratory, science, top, yale

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