{"id":7405,"date":"2026-07-14T12:37:58","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T16:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/?p=7405"},"modified":"2026-07-14T12:37:58","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T16:37:58","slug":"mosaic-deposition-of-inhaled-materials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/2026\/07\/14\/mosaic-deposition-of-inhaled-materials\/","title":{"rendered":"Mosaic deposition of inhaled materials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Utilizing the Crystal Ribcage platform, the Nia Lab was able to visualize the transport dynamics of inhaled aerosols at the single-particle level across alveoli of the lung. This revealed a previously unrecognized aspect of lung biology: alveoli are not all functionally equivalent. Some alveoli receive inhaled particles much more effectively than others, creating a striking spatial organization that they named the &#8220;mosaic pattern.&#8221; Their <em>Nature Biomedical Engineering<\/em> paper reporting this, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41551-026-01724-5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Real time single particle imaging of functional lungs reveals mosaic-like patterns of aerosol deposition in alveoli<\/a>,&#8221; describes how the mosaic pattern changes with development, aging and diseases such as cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, and emphysema. These discoveries provide a new perspective on how inhaled particles, including therapeutics, pollutants, and pathogens, are distributed within the lung.<\/p>\n<p>This work was led by Gabrielle Grifno, a PhD student in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/hadi-nia-ph-d\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Associate Professor Nia<\/a>&#8216;s lab, who coordinated efforts from many other lab members and faculty across research labs at Boston University (including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/bela-suki-ph-d\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">B\u00e9la Suki<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/liangliang-hao-ph-d\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Liang Hao<\/a> from Biomedical Engineering plus <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medicine\/profile\/joseph-mizgerd\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Jay Mizgerd<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/profile\/giovanni-ligresti\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Giovanni Ligresti<\/a> from the Pulmonary Center) and other institutions (James Butler, Mark Saltzman, Michael Hindle, Worth Longest, and Mohammad Rashidian).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2026\/07\/08\/tracking-airborne-particles-on-their-journey-through-your-lungs\/\">Read the press release here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/bela-suki-24a0907\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/pulmonarycenter\/files\/2026\/07\/hadi-nia-spotlight.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"658\" height=\"394\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-5645 size-full\" \/><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Utilizing the Crystal Ribcage platform, the Nia Lab was able to visualize the transport dynamics of inhaled aerosols at the single-particle level across alveoli of the lung. This revealed a previously unrecognized aspect of lung biology: alveoli are not all functionally equivalent. Some alveoli receive inhaled particles much more effectively than others, creating a striking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22552,"featured_media":7406,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6012,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22552"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7407,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions\/7407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/pulmonary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}