Emerging Technologies for In Vitro Inhalation Toxicology.

Area of Science:

• Environmental Health Sciences
• Toxicology
• Bioengineering

Background:

• Airborne viral infections and pollutant inhalation pose significant global health risks, increasing annual morbidity.
• Understanding the pulmonary health outcomes of air contaminant exposure is crucial for human health assessment.
• In vivo models have elucidated systemic effects of environmental contaminants on liver and gastrointestinal health.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide a framework for in vitro inhalation toxicity testing.
• To introduce Lungs-on-Chip (LoC) as a novel approach for inhalation studies.
• To discuss strategies, challenges, and future directions in respiratory toxicology.

Main Methods:

• Review of bioengineering approaches and microfluidics in LoC technology.
• Analysis of different strategies for assessing inhalable substances using LoC.
• Discussion of case studies, reproducibility, and in vitro/in vivo correlations.

Main Results:

• LoC technology offers optimized bioengineering and microfluidic approaches for inhalation toxicity testing.
• Various strategies exist for assessing inhalable substances, with LoC showing promise.
• Published literature demonstrates the utility and challenges of LoC in toxicity studies.

Conclusions:

• In vitro methods, particularly LoC, are advancing respiratory toxicology assessment.
• Future directions involve integrating soft robotics, AI, and machine learning for a systems approach to toxicology.
• Addressing challenges in reproducibility and in vitro/in vivo correlation is key for future models.