Washington: Developing new medicines to treat pulmonary fibrosis, one of
the most common and serious forms of lung disease, is not easy.
However, researchers from
the University of Buffalo have worked to develop a biotechnology that could
streamline the drug-testing process.
The one reason for
developing a treatment for pulmonary fibrosis is that it’s difficult to mimic
how the disease damages and scars lung tissue over time, often forcing
scientists to employ a hodgepodge of time-consuming and costly techniques to
assess the effectiveness of potential treatments.
The innovation relies on the same technology used to print electronic chips, photolithography.
Only instead of semiconducting materials, researchers placed upon the chip
arrays of thin, pliable lab-grown lung tissues - in other words, its
lung-on-a-chip technology.
“Obviously it’s not an
entire lung, but the technology can mimic the damaging effects of lung
fibrosis. Ultimately, it could change how we test new drugs, making the process
quicker and less expensive,” said lead author Ruogang Zhao.
With limited tools for
fibrosis study, scientists have struggled to develop medicine to treat the
disease. To date, there are only two drugs - pirfenidone and nintedanib -
approved by the US Food and Drug Administration that help slow its progress.
