Understanding Mechanisms Driving Lung Disease Caused by Environmental Particulate Matter

The overall objective of our proposal is to bring together our recently developed hIPSC derived respiratory cells with a synthetic animal-free hydrogel to understand how the lungs respond to airborne particulate matter. The objectives below will provide an opportunity for a human specific, multi cell-type and immune competent model of the human lung alveoli that could provide important mechanistic, diagnostic and therapeutic information across many areas of respiratory research.

1) Combine hIPSC derived lung cell types into synthetic animal-free hydrogels
2) Understand the impact of PM on lung alveoli tissue

Together these objectives will create a new human specific model of human alveoli tissue applicable to a broad number of respiratory research areas that could reduce and replace animal models. Importantly, there will be training opportunities provided to other researchers that will allow them to adopt and modify the model to their own experimental needs, further enhancing the possibility that the platform will have a positive impact in reducing animal use in research.