Imaging-Guided Bioreactor for Generating Bioengineered Airway Tissue.

Repeated injury to airway tissue can impair lung function and cause chronic lung disease, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Advances in regenerative medicine and bioreactor technologies offer opportunities to produce lab-grown functional tissue and organ constructs that can be used to screen drugs, model disease, and engineer tissue replacements. Here, a miniaturized bioreactor coupled with an imaging modality that allows in situ visualization of the inner lumen of explanted rat trachea during in vitro tissue manipulation and culture is described. Using this bioreactor, the protocol demonstrates imaging-guided selective removal of endogenous cellular components while preserving the intrinsic biochemical features and ultrastructure of the airway tissue matrix. Furthermore, the delivery, uniform distribution, and subsequent prolonged culture of exogenous cells on the decellularized airway lumen with optical monitoring in situ are shown. The results highlight that the imaging-guided bioreactor can potentially be used to facilitate the generation of functional in vitro airway tissues.

气道组织的反复损伤会损害肺功能并导致慢性肺部疾病，比如慢性阻塞性肺疾病。再生医学和生物反应器技术的进步为生产实验室培育的功能性组织和器官构建体提供了机会，这些构建体可用于药物筛选、疾病建模以及组织替代物的工程构建。在此，描述了一种小型化生物反应器，它与一种成像模式相结合，能够在体外组织操作和培养过程中对移植的大鼠气管内腔进行原位可视化。利用这种生物反应器，该实验方案展示了在保留气道组织基质固有生化特征和超微结构的同时，通过成像引导选择性去除内源性细胞成分。此外，还展示了在脱细胞的气道内腔上外源性细胞的递送、均匀分布以及随后的长时间培养，并进行原位光学监测。结果强调，成像引导的生物反应器有可能用于促进功能性体外气道组织的生成。