A team from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute built a robot with a sort of artificial lung on a chip, hoping to gather enough information about the harm of tobacco on the lungs. For their study, the robot is “loaded” with 12 cigarettes at a time and programmed to light them at a different rate, and to “shoot” them with different intensities.
The smoke then passes into a sort of lung reproduced on a chip that mimics the human airways and containing living lung cells.
A robot with living lung cells
These cells were taken from patients with lung disease but also on healthy patients. The researchers hope to discover how cells react to tobacco smoke in order to better understand the development of serious diseases such as lung cancer Where COPD (obstructive pulmonary disease).
They have already noticed that the cilia which surround the lung cells in order to clean the mucus start to beat at an irregular rate when they are exposed to tobacco. “The smoke interferes and disrupts their cell cleaning function” explain the researchers. “This is probably why smokers have a fatty, mucus-laden cough”.
The robot will continue to smoke cigarette after cigarette to better understand the inflammation of lung cells.
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