Microtissue system allows study of deadly lung disease
Microenvironment system may help drug development for idiopathic
pulmonary fibrosis

Date:
November 16, 2021
Source:
American Institute of Physics
Summary:
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and rising air pollution levels,
incidence of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is anticipated to rise,
urgently increasing the need for strong model systems. Researchers
describe a 3D cell culturing platform that allows study of lung
fibroblasts and their microenvironment. The platform enables
measurement of cell behaviors and microenvironment changes involved
in the disease progression of IPF, and the platform's size and
simplicity make it suitable for use in high- throughput drug
screening protocols.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a deadly and rapidly progressing
disease with no cure.


==========================================================================
The disease involves abnormal interactions between lung cells, including fibroblasts, and their surrounding environment. Because of this, standard
2D cell culture models used for drug screening tend to perform poorly
when predicting response to potential therapies.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and rising air pollution levels, incidence
of IPF is anticipated to rise, urgently increasing the need for strong
model systems.

In APL Bioengineering, from AIP Publishing, researchers from the
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and Mayo Clinic in Rochester,
Minnesota, describe a 3D cell culturing platform that allows study
of lung fibroblasts and their microenvironment. The platform enables measurement of cell behaviors and microenvironment changes involved in
the disease progression of IPF, and the platform's size and simplicity
make it suitable for use in high-throughput drug screening protocols.

"IPF is a horrible disease that drastically impacts a patient's life
and eventually causes them to die from lack of oxygen," said co-author Katherine Cummins. "It's really important to have lab tools and models
that create and control the microenvironment in which the cells sit,
because this may be key to preclinical identification of possible
treatments." Unlike rodent IPF models that do not mimic progressive
disease and other cell culture systems that lack the surrounding microenvironment, their microtissue platform allows study of fibroblasts
within an extracellular matrix (ECM).

Changes in the ECM are a hallmark of IPF, so the system allows more
relevant functional outputs. Moreover, its simplicity and tunability
make it easy to use.

"Many organoid and lab-on-a-chip platforms can be hard to use," said
co-author David Wood. "What's exciting is that this system is very easy
to use. We've already disseminated it to two other labs who are using it completely independent of us." Validation of the system's functioning
focused primarily on ECM remodeling (i.e., cell-driven changes to the microenvironment) and cell contractility, which increases in activated, diseased fibroblasts.

Multiple tests for each of these two functions demonstrated the system
robustly quantifies key aspects of fibrosis. These results were reproduced using patient-donated cells as well, indicating the system could be used
for personalized medicine.

Moreover, the system's versatility allows it to be used with different
cell types and other matrix components, so it could be adapted for use
in the study of other diseases where cell-microenvironment interactions contribute to disease. The research team has already used the system to
study liver toxicity and anticipates it could be used across multiple
solid organ systems, including in the study of cancer progression and metastasis.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by American_Institute_of_Physics. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Katherine A. Cummins, Peter B. Bitterman, Daniel J. Tschumperlin,
David
K. Wood. A scalable 3D tissue culture pipeline to enable functional
therapeutic screening for pulmonary fibrosis. APL Bioengineering,
2021; 5 (4): 046102 DOI: 10.1063/5.0054967 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211116111312.htm

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