A 3D cell culturing system for studying tuberculosis has been unveiled by British scientists.
The system, using microspheres, enables a better model of the lung than two-dimensional cultures, the developers say.
Professor Paul Elkington of Southampton University, UK, and colleagues explain that the activity of infectious bacteria in traditional two-dimensional cell culture often differs from that in 3D culture.
"Consequently, conclusions drawn from two-dimensional cell culture systems may not fully reflect events in vivo," they warned in mBio yesterday (7 February).
However, technical difficulties have limited researchers’ ability to view bacteria this way.
Tuberculosis kills more people than any other infection and efforts to reduce the global burden of the disease have been unsuccessful. So the team believe that studies need a more representative model of the disease in order to tackle it more effectively. Mice are the main animal model used to study tuberculosis, but they differ from humans in their inflammatory response and their lung response to tuberculosis.
Professor Elkington’s team developed an effective 3D cell culture with improved cell survival times, and in which inflammatory signalling can be seen more clearly.
They write: "This methodology has wide applicability to investigate infectious, inflammatory and neoplastic diseases and develop novel drug regimes and vaccination approaches."
Professor Elkington commented: "We believe this is a really exciting development for the field of tuberculosis research. The 3D sphere can be created with a collagen matrix so it is more like a human lung. This produces an environment which allows particular antibiotics that are important in treating patients, to kill the infection, which they cannot do in other 2D model systems.
"This system will help us speed up the process of finding treatments and vaccines for human tuberculosis, an infection that kills 1.8 million people per year."
Bielecka, M. K. et al. A Bioengineered 3-Dimensional Cell Culture Platform Integrated With Microfluidics to Address Antimicrobial Resistance in Tuberculosis mBio 7 February 2017 doi: 10.1128/mBio.02073-16 [abstract]
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