‘Mini-lungs’ reveal early stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection

[2greys]

‘Mini-lungs’ grown from tissue donated to Cambridge hospitals has provided a team of scientists from South Korea and the UK with important insights into how COVID-19 damages the lungs. Writing in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the researchers detail the mechanisms underlying SARS-CoV-2 infection and the early innate immune response in the lungs.

To date, there have been more than 40 million cases of COVID-19 and almost 1.13 million deaths worldwide. The main target tissues of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, especially in patients that develop pneumonia, appear to be alveoli – tiny air sacs in the lungs that take up the oxygen we breathe and exchange it with carbon dioxide to exhale.

To better understand how SARS-CoV-2 infects the lungs and causes disease, a team of scientists from the UK and South Korea turned to organoids – ‘mini-organs’ grown in three dimensions to mimic the behaviour of tissue and organs.

bioengineer.org/mini-lungs-...

Cell Stem Cell. Research (PDF file):

reader.elsevier.com/reader/...

[SquirrelsHolt]

Evening all 👮‍♀️! Excellent piece of reading there 2greys . Thank

you for passing it on to us. 🐿🌈

[cesces]

It would appear they learned nothing of substance.

[2greys in reply to cesces]

“Based on our model we can tackle many unanswered key questions, such as understanding genetic susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2, assessing relative infectivity of viral mutants, and revealing the damage processes of the virus in human alveolar cells,” said Dr Young Seok Ju, co-senior author, and an Associate Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. “Most importantly, it provides the opportunity to develop and screen potential therapeutic agents against SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

[Daisy55]

How interesting , thank you x

[Alberta56]

Sounds promising

[Izb1]

Amazing what they can do, we just dont know what is going on behind the scenes x

[Dilly2]

Interesting thanks 2greys.