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Posted on May 31, 2018, 1 a.m.
Innovative new biotechnology could reduce cost and time of developing medicines to treat lung disease such as pulmonary fibrosis, as published in the journal Nature Communications.
It is difficult to develop new medicines to treat pulmonary fibrosis due to it being difficult to mimic how the disease damages and scars lung tissue over time, making the use of hodgepodge time consuming costly technique to be used to assess effectiveness of potential treatments; this new biotechnology could streamline the process.
This new biotechnology relies on the same photolithography technology that is used to print electronic chips, but instead of semiconducting materials the chip was placed on chip arrays of thin pliable lab grown lung tissues, creating a lung on a chip technology.
While not an entire lung the biotechnology can mimic damaging effects of lung fibrosis and possibly change how new drugs are tested via making the process more cost effective and quicker. Limited tools for fibrosis study has left researchers struggling to develop methods to treat the disease, currently there are only 2 approved by the FDA which help to slow its progress: nintedanib and pirfenidone; which both treat only idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis out of more than 200 types of lung fibrosis. Existing tools do not simulate progression over time, which is another challenge limiting medicine development; this biotechnology hopes to step forward and be a real game changer.
Microlithography was used to print small flexible pillars from silicon based organic polymers which was placed on tissue acting as alveoli on top of the pillars. Fibrosis was induced by introducing a protein that causes lung cells to become diseased, leading to contraction and stiffening of the engineered lung tissue, mimicking scarring of lung alveolar tissue associated with the disease. Tissue contraction caused the pillars to bend, allowing calculation of tissue contraction force based on mechanical principles. Effectiveness was tested with pirfenidone and nintedanib. Both drugs worked differently showing positive results, suggesting that the lung on a chip biotechnology could be used to test a variety of potential new treatments for lung fibrosis.
Materials provided by University at Buffalo.
Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
Mohammadnabi Asmani, Sanjana Velumani, Yan Li, Nicole Wawrzyniak, Isaac Hsia, Zhaowei Chen, Boris Hinz, Ruogang Zhao. Fibrotic microtissue array to predict anti-fibrosis drug efficacy. Nature Communications, 2018; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04336-z
