2022/05/24 | People | In-vitro & Organs-on-Chip
Arunima Sengupta wins PostDoc travel grant to MPS
Arunima Sengupta has been awarded a travel grant to attend the MPS World Summit 2022 in New Orleans, USA (30 May – 03 June) to present her research. The postdoctoral researcher in the Organs-on-Chip Technologies Lab will speak on “Dynamic lung inhalation-on-chip: A triple co-culture cellular platform to predict toxicity of aerosolized irritants”.
Emphysema is a severe manifestation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), consistent of persistent injury to the alveolar epithelium through toxicants. Very few in-vitro models are available to study the mechanisms of toxicant inhalation in the distal lung. Arunima Sengupta and the OOC team have therefore built a dynamic lung-on-chip system in collaboration with the startup AlveoliX which allows to recreate occupational inhalation of the lung alveolar-barrier.
Exposing this system to varying doses of nanoparticles (ZnO, TiO2) and a toxic compound (PHMG) using a Cloud-based aerosol exposure chamber (Vitrocell GmbH), the team could show an inflammatory response against PHMG and significant toxicity induced by aerosolized nanoparticles. This suggests that the system could be a promising tool to study emphysema, lung toxicity and other acute respiratory disorders.
