Breathing Lung-on-a-Chip from One Human Donor Advances Personalized Medicine
Originally written in Genetic Engineering and Bitotechnology News on January 2, 2026 Credit: TefiM / iStock / Getty Images Plus Air sacs in the lungs called alveoli are crucial for gas exchange and provide an important barrier against inhaled viruses and bacteria that cause respiratory diseases like flu and tuberculosis (TB). However, there remains a gap in developing immunocompetent and experimentally accessible alveolar systems to study human respiratory diseases. In a new study published in Science Advances titled, “ Autologous human iPSC–derived alveolus-on-chip reveals early pathological events of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection ,” researchers from the Francis Crick Institute and AlveoliX have developed what they describe as the first human lung-on-a-chip model using stem cells taken from a single human donor . The chip can simulate breathing motion...