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Mini lungs to learn about animal disease
Scientists from Wageningen University & Research (WUR) have managed to make miniature respiratory tracts from the stem cells of cows and pigs. This helps them study the behaviour of respiratory viruses without the need for lab animals.
Swine influenza and bovine respiratory disease are troublesome animal diseases that regularly affect pigs and cows. It is not easy to study how the viruses behave either, because you need live animals that you expose to the disease, which is not a desirable state of affairs for animal welfare reasons.
Now Wageningen researchers have created mini respiratory tracts from the stem cells of cows and pigs. Such mini organs, termed organoids, are made from stem cells from the lungs of animals. They have the same form and function as the lungs of a live animal, but they are far smaller: one to two millimetres.
If there is an outbreak of a new virus, we will be able to test whether the respiratory tract organoids of these animals can become infected.