The researchers used organ chip technology to simulate lung damage and immune response caused by new coronavirus infections

The official website of Kunming Institute of Zoology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced on the 13th that the team of Qin Jianhua researchers of Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in cooperation with the team of Zheng Yongtang researchers of the Institute, used organ chip technology to establish an in-body lung organ microphysiological system, simulating lung tissue damage and immune response caused by new coronavirus infection, etc., to provide new strategies and new technologies for the study of the disease-causing mechanism of the new coronavirus and rapid drug evaluation.
new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection has led to a global pandemic.
lungs are the main target organs for SARS-CoV-2 infections.
the current clinical treatment of neo-crown pneumonia is mainly comprehensive treatment, but there is still a lack of special drugs.
, although early cell and animal models have been used in the study of new coronavirus, there are still many limitations to some extent.
stage, there is still a lack of a research model that can reflect the human body's response to new coronavirus infection at the level of tissue organs, which is also one of the bottlenecks that seriously restrict the current process of new coronavirus drug research and development.
organ chip is a new frontier of cross-technology, it integrates physics, chemistry, engineering and biology and other multidisciplinary methods, can be several square centimeters of the size of the flow control chip bionics to build a variety of human tissue organs micro-model, used to reflect the key structure of human organs and biological functions.
, in particular, it has the potential to reproduce the human body's response to a variety of external stimuli in an unprecedented way, with wide potential for application in life science research, disease research and research and development of new drugs.
the study, the researchers first used organ chip technology bionics to build a functional unit of the human alba bubble, and further experiments on new coronavirus infections.
The researchers simulated the micro-environment of human altruum tissue in perfusionable microchips with multi-layer cavity design, and in experiments, in the micro-cavities on both sides of the chip porous membrane (the altruum side/vascular side), through the human The dynamic co-culture of albathic endocrine cells, pulmonary microvascular endoblast cells and exovascular blood immune cells establishes a functional alcupile-capillary barrier containing complex factors such as human-sourced cells, mechanical fluids and tissue interfaces, and then conducts experiments on new coronavirus infections on the chip.
results show that when the albavirus side skin cells on the chip are exposed to the new coronavirus, a large number of virus replications can be seen in the endoculocytes, and the integrity of the lung tissue barrier is damaged.
analysis of the transcription group found that SARS-CoV-2 infection triggered different response mechanisms in both cells, activating the type I interferon pathline in the endoskin cells and the JAK-STAT pathline in the endoskin cells, respectively.
According to the viral load calculation, human anticulmonary endocrine cells show greater viral susceptibleness, is the main place of virus replication, and the human lung microvascular endothyste cells have a low viral load, suggesting that the virus may indirectly affect endothor cells by infecting lung endothelectrine cells.
In addition, the study found that viral infections can also lead to increased adhesion of chip vascular exoglotes to endoblast cells and release a large number of inflammatory factors (e.g. IL-1 beta, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α), suggesting that neo-coronavirus infected lung tissue may release a large number of inflammatory factors by activating human immune cells to induce pulmonary microvascular endothial damage.
the model, the researchers also conducted preliminary tests and evaluations of the ability of viral compounds.
The study uses organ chip technology to establish a model of human neocycell pneumonia disease based on tissue level, and simulates a series of key pathophysiological processes such as lung barrier dysfunction, immune cell adhesion, inflammatory factor release and endodertic cell damage caused by neo-coronavirus infection, reflecting the pathogen-host interaction in which multicellular complex factors in new coronavirus infection are involved.
this model system has the characteristics of short modeling cycle, low cost, human origin and easy monitoring, which can obtain dynamic biological information which is difficult to obtain by traditional methods, and can be extended to the study of the mechanism of new coronary pneumonia with multi-organ tiredness.
related research results were published recently in Advanced Science.
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