Organ-on-a-chip technology is helping researchers create models of the human airway to study asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other health issues.
The model, created by a research team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, allows for the study of lung diseases over several weeks, giving better insight into the illnesses, according to an announcement.
"To closely mimic the complex 3-D cellular architecture of actual human small airways, we designed a microfluidic device that contains a fully matured human small airway epithelium with different specialized cell types exposed to air in one of its two parallel microchannels," said co-first author Remi Villenave, Ph.D. Announcement