Generation of pure alveolar cells for disease modeling and cell therapy

This technology is an in vitro platform for generating pure alveolar type II cells from lung organoids for lung disease modeling and cell replacement therapy.

Unmet Need: In vitro generation of stable alveolar cells with high efficiency

Current methods to generate lung progenitors and derived lineages (e.g., alveolar cells) in vitro suffer from low efficiency. Several methods have been developed to overcome this issue, but they require sequential sorting or purification steps. Other methods require mesenchymal stems for cell propagation or suffer from low stability over multiple growth stages.

The Technology: In vitro platform to generate pure alveolar cells without purification steps

This platform generates pure alveolar type II cells from ‘lung bud organoids’ without requiring purification steps. It does so by dissociating lung organoids that do not require isolation steps for generation into single cells. Hematopoietic stem cells (hPSCs) are maintained in the presence of feeders, and definitive endoderm is produced in-house to maintain future lung cell potential. Cells can be expanded by ~10-fold every two weeks.

This technology has been tested with lung bud organoids and cultured for up to 12 weeks.

Applications:

Lung disease modeling (e.g., surfactant deficiency, fibrotic lung disease, viral infections)
Cell replacement therapy
Research tool to study alveolar cells
Drug screening

Advantages:

Does not require downstream purification
Mesenchymal cells are not required for cell propagation
Phenotypically more stable over propagation stages

Lead Inventor:

Hans-Willem Snoeck, M.D., Ph.D.

Patent Information:

Patent Pending

Related Publications:

Leko IM, Schrode N, Torres J, Pezet M, Thimraj TA, Beaumont KG, Snoeck HM. “Generation and expansion of transitional lung organoids from human pluripotent stem cells.” bioRxiv. 2023 Jan 30; 526265.

Tech Ventures Reference:

IR CU22319, CU22318, CU17197
Licensing Contact: Joan Martinez