Researchers successfully create lung organoids similar to human lungs

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), New York, NY, have successfully created lung organoids—tiny 3-D structures that look and function like a full-sized lung—from human pluripotent stem cells. These organoids, created in a dish, can generate models of human lung diseases, and will potentially help scientists better understand and treat respiratory illnesses. They published their results online April 24 in the journal Nature Cell Biology.

“Researchers have taken up the challenge of creating organoids to help us understand and treat a variety of diseases,” said Hans-Willem Snoeck, PhD, professor of medicine (in microbiology & immunology) at Columbia and lead investigator of the study. “But we have been tested by our limited ability to create organoids that can replicate key features of human disease.”

In Dr. Snoeck’s lab, he and colleagues created these lung organoids, which are the first to include branching airway and alveolar structures that are similar to human lungs. They infected these organoids with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—one of the primary causes of lower respiratory tract infection in infants—and they reacted similarly to real lungs when infected. Further experimentation demonstrated that these organoids also responded similarly to human lungs when carrying a gene mutation linked to pulmonary fibrosis—which causes 30,000 to 40,000 deaths annually in the United States.

Currently, there is no vaccine or effective antiviral therapy for RSV, and for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, the only treatment is a lung transplant.

“Organoids, created with human pluripotent or genome-edited embryonic stem cells, may be the best, and perhaps only, way to gain insight into the pathogenesis of these diseases,” concluded Dr. Snoeck.

This work was supported by the NIH (grants HL120046-01, 1U01HL134760-01, RO1 AI031971, and RO1 AI114736), a sponsored research agreement from Northern Biologics Inc., and funding from the Thomas R Kully IPF Research Fund.