Mosaic deposition of inhaled materials
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 “mosaic pattern.” Their Nature Biomedical Engineering paper reporting this, “Real time single particle imaging of functional lungs reveals mosaic-like patterns of aerosol deposition in alveoli,” 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.
This work was led by Gabrielle Grifno, a PhD student in Associate Professor Nia‘s lab, who coordinated efforts from many other lab members and faculty across research labs at Boston University (including Béla Suki and Liang Hao from Biomedical Engineering plus Jay Mizgerd and Giovanni Ligresti from the Pulmonary Center) and other institutions (James Butler, Mark Saltzman, Michael Hindle, Worth Longest, and Mohammad Rashidian).
