Human lung grown in a lab

For the first time ever, scientists at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) at Galveston have succeeded in growing a lung in a lab. The functional lab lung was grown using components from lungs of deceased children who had died from most likely a car accident.

The researchers had stripped one of the lungs down to a bare “skeleton” of just collagen and elastin, the main proteins in the connective tissue of the lung. Using this stripped-down lung as a “scaffold,” they then harvested cells from the other lung, which were applied to the scaffolding.

This lung structure was then placed in a chamber filled with a nutritious liquid, which Joan Nichols, a researcher associated with the project, describes as “resembling Kool-Aid.”

After 4 weeks of immersion, the team extracted a complete human lung from the liquid – “just pinker, softer and less dense.” The team then successfully replicated the process using a second set of lungs.

It is UTMB’s Dr. Michael Riddle who is credited with accelerating the procedure for growing the lungs, and he did so by improvising new equipment out of home furniture. “He’s the one who went home and actually built using – I’m not kidding – a fish tank that he went and bought from a pet store,” Dr. Nichols says.

Now the important question. Can lab-grown lungs be used in transplants?

Lung transplants are often the only treatment for incurable lung disorders such as cystic fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). But successful lung transplants are not so common, as finding matching donors is difficult and many patients die while waiting for their turn for transplants.

The work at UTMB’s is a landmark in regenerative engineering, but the reality of lab-engineered lungs being used in transplants could be around 2025.

The next phase of the research will be to test the lab-grown lungs in pigs.

Dr. Ajay Sati.