Scientists have been working really hard to create lungs in the lab. But owing to the complexity of the lungs and its unique cell structure coupled with a complex network of blood vessels, growing artificial lungs has been really tough. And that’s been the main reasons, why studying lungs is thought to be an uphill task. Today lungs transplantation is considered to be one of the toughest medical exercises.
However, two research groups have inched closer towards creation of lungs in lab. They have successfully engineered a lung, which can give life to rat, while the other one has succeeded in creating lung-mimicking device for toxicology studies. The second one, however, appears to be closer to the human lungs.
A team under the guidance of Dr. Laura Niklason at Yale University has developed a lung that can sustain life of a rat. The group used used a scaffold-based approach in the light of complex structure of rats. First they took lungs from adult rats, dissolved all the cells. And then they began everything from the leftover—fibrous skeleton. The process was highly complex and experts kept every detail in mind while executing the procedures. The resultant was as good as 95% of the original one.
"It's exciting to see that it's not just about [the] heart; it works in other organs and tissues too," said Doris Taylor of the University of Minnesota, who conducted the pioneering heart work. "It really reinforces the belief that these scaffolds are smart. They know how to tell cells what to do, where to go and how to behave."
Speaking about the formation of blood clots—that happened a few hours after the lungs transplantation, Niklason said, It's pointed out to us what worked, but it's also pointed out to us what needs to be made better.” The scientist asserted that they had not hit the bull’s eye yet. "I clearly don't think we've solved the whole problem, but I sort of feel like we're laying train tracks into the mountains," Niklason said. "We haven't gotten to the other side of the mountain range yet, but when we do, I hope there's a big bus of stem cells waiting for us."
The other research was pretty different from the aforementioned one. Dr. Don Ingber and his team at Harvard University focused on artificial device that can render life to lungs. They call the procedure as “lung on chip” under which a small device is replaced with the actual lung. The aim of the study was check usage of respiratory effects of tiny substances called nanoparticles as replacement to animal and cell culture testing. "It's kind of scary that we don't know how these (nano materials) particles affect our body," said the study's lead author, Dan Huh, a postdoctoral fellow in Ingber's lab.
The device is thought to be part of “biomimetics”—under which biological design basics are used to create new technologies. "This is fantastic," said Luke Lee, a bioengineer at UC Berkeley. "I think it's the best biomimetic paper I've ever seen.""This really shows that you can engineer artificial systems outside the body that will be predictive of the things going on inside your body," said Shuichi Takayama, a biomedical engineer at the University of Michigan.
