Small scale screening bioreactor with airway tissues and mucosa for the progression and treatment of lung disease

This technology is a biomimetic ex vivo bioreactor with real-time and non-invasive monitoring and quantification for modeling the progression and treatment of airway disease, including cystic fibrosis.

Unmet Need: High-fidelity models to capture the complexity of pulmonary dieseases

Cystic fibrosis is progressive lung disease characterized by the build-up of thick and sticky mucus in the lung airways and chronic pulmonary inflammation. Current models of cystic fibrosis have limited ability to recapitulate the human lung disease. Animal models fail to simulate pulmonary inflammation; while cell culture models do not accurately reflect the accumulation of mucus. The lack of high-fidelity models remains a significant obstacle to developing curative interventions.

The Technology: Mucosal tissue bioreactor for airway disease modeling and therapeutic screening

This technology is an air-liquid interface bioreactor that contains tissue explants and bioartificial mucus to recapitulate specific airway diseases, including cystic fibrosis. The bioartificial mucus is benchmarked to the patient sputum to match the thickness, viscosity and hydration of native mucus. This technology is compatible with epifluorescence and light sheet microscopy for real-time non-invasive monitoring the cultured tissues. Bioreactor modularity allows for simultaneous maintenance of numerous tissues for high-throughput screening.

This technology has been validated with human and porcine airway tissues.

Applications:

• Long term culture of human lung tissues
• Therapeutic screening for cystic fibrosis
• Modeling of pulmonary diseases
• Extensions to modeling of other mucosal tissues, including gastrointestinal, nasal, oral, and vaginal

Advantages:

• High fidelity of recapitulating cystic fibrosis
• Quantitative studies of the transport of therapeutic through mucus and uptake by the cells.
• High-throughput platform for disease modeling and therapeutic screening
• Compatible with real-time and non-invasive imaging and sensing

Lead Inventor:

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, Ph.D

Patent Information:

Patent Pending

Related Publications:

• Pinezich M, Chen P, Van Hassel J, Hudock M, Diane M, Gavaudan O, Mir SM, Chen J, Bacchetta M, Kim J, Vunjak-Novakovic G. “WS14.01 Ex vivo whole lung model of cystic fibrosis (CF) for therapeutic screening” Journal of Cystic Fibrosis. 2023 June 1; 22: S28.

Tech Ventures Reference:

• IR CU23307, CU23368

• Licensing Contact: Beth Kauderer