{"id":6079,"date":"2020-08-10T11:13:26","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T15:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/?p=6079"},"modified":"2020-08-10T11:13:26","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T15:13:26","slug":"bu-lab-using-microscopic-lungs-to-study-covid-19-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/2020\/08\/bu-lab-using-microscopic-lungs-to-study-covid-19-video\/","title":{"rendered":"BU lab using microscopic \u2018lungs\u2019 to study COVID-19 (Video)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Original article from Boston 25 News by Jim Morelli<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>.<\/span><\/span> August 5<\/span>, 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Scientists sometimes use human lung cancer cells in medical research. But there’s just one problem with that, said virologist Elke Muhlberger, PhD.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThese cancer cells do not act like lung cells,\u201d she said. \u201cThey act like cancer cells.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For her research on Covid-19, Dr. Muhlberger, who works at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, has the next best thing to an actual human lung \u2013 a microscopic version known as an organoid.<\/p>\n

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Organoids are derived from adult blood cells that have essentially been stripped of their identities then put through a chemical process to grow them into specific cell types.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“So they could become a liver cell,” Muhlberger said. “They could become a lung cell.”<\/p>\n

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And for Muhlberger, they became the specific type of lung cell commonly attacked by COVID-19.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“It’s a cell type which is deep in our lung,” Muhlberger said. “It’s called an alveolar lung cell. People that get really sick \u2013 they have the virus in these specific cells.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Click to Read Full Article on Boston 25 News<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original article from Boston 25 News by Jim Morelli. August…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6107,"featured_media":6080,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3075,1298,452,3082,3076],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6081,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079\/revisions\/6081"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/neidl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}