Development of human in vitro model for respiratory diseases investigation

Lung diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are an increasing global health burden affecting hundreds of millions of people worldwide. The development of new inhaled medicines for the treatment of airway disease is being held back by the lack of understanding of how the airways respond to new therapies. Alveolar macrophages with foamy appearance are often observed in the lungs of rats when dosed with new inhaled candidate drugs. This stops their progression in drug discovery on the grounds of safety. The lack of relevant tools and mechanistic understanding of macrophage stimulation prevents current preclinical studies from determining whether the immune responses in the lungs are normal or adverse. The aim of the project is to develop a non-animal in vitro cell co-culture model alongside with the high content functionality assay to better understand the interactions between alveolar cells, which may result in better screening of new inhaled drugs, appearance of new drugs to market and overall better treatment of airway diseases in people.