Abstract

Advanced In vitro Inhalation Lung-on-Chip Platforms For Preclinical Research

Josué Sznitman, Associate Professor, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

With rapid advances, the development of lung-on-chip platforms is offering novel avenues for more realistic inhalation assays in pharmaceutical research, and an opportunity to depart from traditional in vitro lung assays. As advanced models capturing the cellular pulmonary make-up at an air-liquid interface (ALI), lung-on-chips emulate both morphological features and biological functionality of the airway barrier with the ability to integrate respiratory breathing motions and ensuing tissue strains. Such in vitro systems allow importantly to mimic more realistic physiological respiratory flow conditions, with the opportunity to integrate physically-relevant transport determinants of aerosol inhalation therapy, i.e. recapitulating the pathway from airborne flight to deposition on the airway lumen. In this presentation, we discuss recent developments in our group on devising such advanced human-relevant lung-on-chip models that mimic in situ-like inhalation assays with endpoints geared at cytotoxicity, respiratory diseases and therapies.