دانلود رایگان مقاله پیشرفت در درمان ریوی و توسعه دارو

Abstract

Lung disease is one of the major causes of death, and the rate of pulmonary diseases has been increasing for decades. Although lung transplantation is the only treatment for majority of patients, this method has been limited due to lack of donors. Therefore, recently, attentions have increased to some new strategies with the aid of tissue engineering and microfluidics techniques not only for the functional analysis, but also for drug screening. In fact, in tissue engineering, the engineered tissue is able to grow by using the patient's own cells without intervention in the immune system. On the other hand, microfluidics devices are applied in order to evaluate drug screenings, function analysis and toxicity. This article reviews new advances in lung tissue engineering and lung-on-a-chip. Furthermore, future directions, difficulties and drawbacks of pulmonary therapy in these areas are discussed.

. Future directions of lung studies

Lung tissue engineering (LTE) currently is the appropriate method as an alternative treatment for pulmonary disease. However, LTE has many drawbacks and further investigation requires overcoming the gaps of LTE. Since, lung tissue has complex structure; therefore, to achieve better matrix and overcome challenges in scaffold preparation, decellularized scaffold was suggested to use in re-seeding process (Lwebuga-Mukasa et al., 1986). This method has several benefits and provides more precise results rather than other methods. Nevertheless, some disadvantages remain throughout the whole process of recellularization. In fact, selecting suitable cell sources, sterilization protocol of matrix, media and growth factors are the most problems. Furthermore, to obtain efficient lung engineered tissue, monitoring the reseeding, appropriate bioreactor and scaling up are the significant difficulties which should be studied in detail for future investigations. Likewise, lung-on-a-chip that regenerates physiological responses the same as the normal level could influence on future lung investigations as replacements for animal tests in development of drug screening and toxicology. These micro-devices also provide online monitoring and analysis during various trends which are not feasible by other conventional methods. In addition to its benefits, some drawbacks have remained. First of all, although lung-on-a-chip provides suitable in vitro lung tissue model and is able to evaluate responses to pulmonary diseases, some complex pulmonary diseases are not able to reproduce in vitro. Furthermore, some mechanisms in lung damage and fibrosis are difficult to assess. Finally, since research on this microfluidic chips has been limited to short-term culture, therefore, these micro-devices should be developed to long-term cultivation. As a result, future attempts must be oriented to combine all of the above in order to obtain reliable model.