Human Airway and Alveolar Organoidsfrom BAL Fluid

摘要

Many lung diseases remain understudied because of a lack of experimental models. Lung organoids, which consist of self-organizing epithelial cells, provide versatile in vitro models for normal and abnormal biology, drug screening, gene editing, and personalized therapeutics (1). However, human organoids are generally derived from lung tissue, which is not commonly obtained, or induced pluripotent stem cells, which require complex manipulation. Recently, one study reported airway organoids from BAL fluid, although sample sizes and characterization were limited (2). Here, we demonstrate robust establishment of airway organoids from a variety of human BAL samples and show that these organoids contain diverse airway cell types. Furthermore, we report the development of BAL-derived alveolar organoids. These techniques significantly expand the scope of lung diseases that can be studied using safely accessible primary human cells. Some of these results were previously reported as an abstract (3).