Bioengineered 3-D Model to Study Human Tuberculosis Infections

Study in a Sentence: Using structural support proteins outside of cells and patient donated blood cells, researchers collaborated with engineers and data scientists to develop 3-D spheres to study the infection of human cells outside the body with tuberculosis (TB), a bacterial infection that kills 1.8 million people per year worldwide.

Healthy for Humans: This model not only recreates the infection and the immune response in patients more accurately but can also be used to develop and test new antibiotic treatments or vaccines for TB.  

Redefining Research: This system offers many advantages over the current animal models used to study TB, which do not fully recapitulate the pathological responses in humans. It also has benefits over 2-D cell cultures, which lack the 3-D environmental interactions and support for prolonged survival of human cells in order to study long-term TB infection.