À̹ÌÁö È®´ë [Source: Cell Stem Cell and KAIST]
The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) said Monday its joint research team has identified how the novel coronavirus destroys lung cells with a lab-based 3D mini-organ culture technique developed to mirror the physiology and pathology of human lung alveolar cells, the major target of Covid-19 infection.
The research team led by KAIST professor Ju Young-seok found the virus proliferated rapidly within six hours of exposure, while it took about three days for an innate immune response to the infection. Researchers also found a single virus particle could be enough to infect one cell and that some cells drastically lost their function on the third day of infection.
For this experiment, the research team newly established a 3D model of human alveolar cells that can be cultured continuously, which can help other researchers to characterize the pathogenesis of Covid-19 and other respiratory pathogens.
Prof. Ju said the scalable 3D model can help research on various respiratory viral infections and will accelerate vaccine and therapeutic developments as animal tests can be skipped.
The research was co-conducted by Prof. Lee Joo-hyeon from University of Cambridge, and other professors and scientists from Korea National Institute of Health, Institute for Basic Science, Seoul National University Hospital and Korean startup GENOMEinSIGHT.
The research findings were recently published in the online version of scientific journal Cell Stem Cell.
By Lee Jong-hwa and Minu Kim
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