Expérimental
Chronic respiratory diseases caused 4 million deaths worldwide in 2019. Pulmonary disease treatments are administered by inhalation in particulate formulations. However, mucociliary clearance (MCC) acts as an effective physical barrier that prevents drugs from reaching the target cells. This mechanism relies on the beating of cilia on the bronchi surface, which allows the displacement of the overlying mucus layer. Inhaled drugs are thus trapped by the mucus and evacuated from the airways. This project aims to model the mechanism of mucociliary clearance using a microfluidic chip, to assess drug penetration through the moving mucus and thus provide a screening platform for new drug formulations. We chose to design a non-cellular MCC model, which will provide an easy and reproducible alternative to cell-based MCC models. The chip is composed of a circular channel covered with magnetic micropillars that can be remotely actuated via an underlying rotating magnet. Preliminary experiments showed that such an actuation of the pillars results in a beating similar to that of bronchial cilia. The trainee will address the following scientific/technical questions: - What is the velocity profile of mucus in the chip? - How to mimic particle deposition on the bronchi during inhalation, with the chip? - Does the chip reproduce the particle behaviour observed on cell-based MMC models? The trainee will be co-supervised by Dr Marine Le Goas, working in Dr Berret’s group