Near-Human tissue-engineered, dynamic model of the large airways
As the burden of disease and cost on the healthcare system continue to increase dramatically a tissue-engineered solution may be the only suitable answer. While advances in this field have led to the development of impressive tissue mimics progress has been relatively slow. One of the reasons for this is that current in vivo models almost exclusively use non-primate animals. The data acquired from these “models” offer poor correlation between human and animal systems and the optimisation of the systems for human compatibility can be costly and time-consuming. This limitation may be overcome by developing near-human models in vitro and specifically, those which better fit the structural and functional complexity of human tissue while reducing the use of animals (“3R’s”).