A team of Japanese researchers has succeeded in making miniature airways from human cells that can be used to study the emerging corona virus (Covid-19) and help develop drugs to treat it.
Researchers at the University of Kyoto Research Center and Applications Stimulated Stem Cells created a 0.2 mm diameter trachea of commercially available and commercially available epithelial cells, which takes about 10 days to transplant, and then subjected them to pneumonia infection, and tested camostat, a drug often used to treat inflammation. Pancreas, and they found it was effective in reducing viral load in the trachea.
The miniature device is expected to serve as a better model for assessing the effectiveness of single-cell antivirals.
The team's miniature bronchial tubes contain four types of cells in addition to Covid-19 receptors, and the team said it is now testing the efficacy of other drugs, including the anti-influenza drug Avijan, also known as faviravir, which was developed by the chemical arm of Vojfelm Holding.
"Since the development of a covid-19 drug is an urgent task, we have chosen a simple and time-consuming method, without the use of catalytic stem cells," says Kazuo Takayama, researcher at the University of Kyoto's Center for Stimulated Stem Cells and Applications.
"We hope to develop a drug with this research," he added, referring to pluripotent stem cells that can grow in any cell type.