(100f) Invited Talk: Engineered Systems for Studying Lung Injury and Disease

Changes in the microenvironment of cells that occur with injury, including maladaptive extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling, are thought to contribute to the initiation of disease, from scar tissue formation in the lungs that leads to fibrosis to the re-activation of dormant disseminated tumor cells that leads to the late cancer recurrence. Engineered culture systems provide great opportunities for studying these complex processes for improved mechanistic understanding and drug evaluation. In this talk, I will highlight some of our efforts in this arena. Specifically, we recently have established synthetic ECMs that allow us to probe the response of lung cells (e.g., epithelial cells, fibroblasts, immune cells) to ‘injury’ to the ECM that is triggered by the application of enzymes or light. Additionally, we have established human reporter cell lines that allow real-time monitoring of cellular responses to these microenvironment changes. We are utilizing these systems to probe mechanisms and potential interventions to prevent the initiation and progression of maladaptive wound healing and the disease processes that follow. Further, we are translating such disease models into a high-throughput format utilizing a bioprinter to enable drug screening.