Applications and Approaches for 3D Precision-cut Lung Slices: Disease Modeling and Drug Discovery.

Applications and Approaches for 3D Precision-cut Lung Slices: Disease Modeling and Drug Discovery. Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol. 2020 Jan 28;: Authors: Alsafadi HN, Uhl FE, Pineda RH, Bailey KE, Rojas M, Wagner DE, Königshoff M Abstract Chronic lung diseases (CLDs), such as COPD, interstitial lung disease, and lung cancer, are among the leading causes of morbidity globally and present a major health and financial burden on patients and society. Effective treatments are scarce and relevant human model systems to effectively study CLD pathomechanisms and thus discover and validate potential new targets and therapies are needed. Precision-cut lung slices (PCLS) from healthy and diseased human tissue represent one promising tool which can closely recapitulate the complexity of the lung's native environment, and recently, improved methodology and accessibility to human tissue has led to increased usage of PCLS to be applied for CLD research. Here, we discuss approaches that utilize human PCLS for advancing our understanding of CLD development as well as drug discovery and validation for CLDs. PCLS enable the study of the complex interactions among different cell types and the extracellular matrix in the lungs' native 3D architecture. PCLS further allow for high resolution (live)imaging of cellular functions in several dimensions. Importantly, PCLS can be derived from diseased lung tissue upon lung surgery or transplantation thus allowing th...
Source: American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology - Category: Molecular Biology Authors: Tags: Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol Source Type: research