Airways in Action

The air we breathe doesn't just contain gases but also dirt, debris and microbes. Thankfully the cells that line our airways have projections called cilia, which filter out these particles. In airway diseases, this process can be disturbed, which is why tissues with cilia are useful in lab studies of these diseases. However, it’s a challenge to maintain cilia in a dish. Here, researchers tested four different solutions in which cells can be grown to find out which is best at maintaining cilia. Cells were imaged using scanning electron microscopy (pictured), revealing that only one solution effectively maintained cilia (left) while the others didn't (examples middle and right). The winning solution succeeded because of the balance of high enough levels of the chemical retinoic acid and low levels of the chemicals VEGF, EGF and FGF-β. These results will help future researchers better study airway tissue and diseases in the lab.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

Lux Fatimathas

Writer

Having pursued science through a career in research, communications and publishing, she is currently a writer and editor for a healthcare marketing agency and also juggles freelance science writing.

• Image adapted from work by Anja E. Luengen and colleagues
• Department of Biohybrid and Medical Textiles (BioTex), AME - Institute of Applied Medical Engineering, Helmholtz Institute, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Scientific Reports, April 2020