Human Lung Chip May Pave Way to Combat COVID-19 Virus

Potential therapeutics for respiratory diseases like COVID-19 reveals promising results as human lung chip disclose the effects of breathing motions on lung immune responses as per a study at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, published in Nature Communications. The average number of breaths taken by a person throughout their life is more than 600 million. Generally, the motions of breathing involve a constant pattern of stretching and relaxing of the lung tissues.

The study team discovered that applying mechanical forces that mimic breathing motions are found to suppressing the replication of the influenza virus by activating protective innate immune responses. In addition, several drugs were found to reduce the production of inflammatory cytokines in infected Alveolus Chips, which could be useful in treating excessive inflammation in the lung.

Based on these studies, one of those drugs was licensed to Cantex Pharmaceuticals for the treatment of COVID-19 and other inflammatory lung diseases.

“This research demonstrates the importance of breathing motions for human lung function, including immune responses to infection, and shows that our Human Alveolus Chip can be used to model these responses in the deep portions of the lung, where infections are often more severe and lead to hospitalization and death. This model can also be used for preclinical drug testing to ensure that candidate drugs actually reduce infection and inflammation in functional human lung tissue,” says co-first author Haiqing Bai, PhD, a Wyss Technology Development Fellow at the institute.

Source-Medindia