Modeling Pulmonary Cystic Fibrosis in a Human Lung Airway-on-a-chip: a new research paper originated by the collaboration with the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and recently published in the “Journal of Cystic Fibrosis”.

A study on the recapitulation of cystic fibrosis (CF) airways in a microfluidic chip has been published in the November 16 issue of the "Journal of Cystic Fibrosis". This study was conducted by Dr. Roberto Plebani, Department of Medical, Oral and Biotechnological Sciences, member of the laboratory of Molecular Medicine at CAST, and Ratnakar Potla (Wyss Institute at Harvard University).

In this work, the 2-channel microfluidic Chip-S1 (Emulate, Inc. Boston) was used to build the first Cystic fibrosis (CF) airway chip, using bronchial epithelial cells isolated from patients’ lungs and lined by an extra-cellular matrix coating and microvascular endothelial cells. The CF airway chip faithfully reproduced the main characteristics of the disease, such as hyperaccumulation of the mucus, increased ciliary beating and density, and a proinflammatory profile both in presence or absence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection. Thus, this chip represents a significant progress towards animal-free research for CF modeling and personalized medicine.

This work was supported by a grant obtained from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and the Programma Operativo Nazionale Ricerca e Innovazione.

Link to the article: https://www.cysticfibrosisjournal.com/article/S1569-1993(21)02106-8/fulltext

Modeling Pulmonary Cystic Fibrosis in a Human Lung Airway-on-a-chip

Roberto Plebani^1,2*, Ratnakar Potla^1,3*, Mercy Soong¹, Haiqing Bai¹, Zohreh Izadifar¹, Amanda Jiang¹, Renee N. Travis¹, Chaitra Belgur¹, Alexandre Dinis¹, Mark J. Cartwright¹, Rachelle Prantil-Baun¹, Pawan Jolly¹, Sarah E. Gilpin¹, Mario Romano², Donald E. Ingber^1,3,4,#.

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¹Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Boston, MA.

²Center on Advanced Studies and Technology (CAST), Department of Medical, Oral and Biotechnological Sciences, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy.

³Vascular Biology Program and Department of Surgery, Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.

⁴Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, MA.