# A Commercially Durable Biobank of Genetically Diverse and Differentiation Competent Primary Airway Progenitor Cells Validated for In Vitro Toxicology Screening

> **NIH NIH R43** · PROPAGENIX, INC. · 2021 · $252,131

## Abstract

Project Abstract
While primary human airway epithelial cells (hAECs) have seen increasing use as models for in
vitro toxicology screening, there remain severe drawbacks to their broad deployment. The
limitations involve: (1) the very limited expansion potential of primary hAECs in culture results in
small manufacturing lot sizes and high product costs; (2) the inability of propagated AECs to
form fully differentiated, pseudostratified 3D tissue after only 4 to 5 passages in culture, thereby
further exacerbating supply and cost issues; and (3) the issues of data variances due to lack of
a systematic approach to donor variability and their genetic diversity. Taken together, these
drawbacks result in small lot sizes of expanded cells from each donor and very expensive 3D
tissue models, making it very challenging to provide or perform cost-effective, standardized in
vitro toxicant screening. Propagenix has published on the ability of our EpiX™ cell culture
technology to significantly enable the bioproduction of primary human airway epithelial cells
possessing genomic stability and differentiative functionality over extended culture propagation.
This program seeks to utilize this capability to build a human airway epithelial cell biobank that
is intentional about incorporating genetic diversity and is accompanied by a preliminary dataset
demonstrating parameters of toxicant response. Of particular importance will be information on
toxicant response within specific subsets of airway epithelial cells and the future use of this
information to create reporter cell models to decrease commercial barriers for in vitro toxicant
screening.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10111277
- **Project number:** 1R43ES032523-01
- **Recipient organization:** PROPAGENIX, INC.
- **Principal Investigator:** Brian Andrew Pollok
- **Activity code:** R43 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $252,131
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-01-15 → 2022-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10111277

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10111277, A Commercially Durable Biobank of Genetically Diverse and Differentiation Competent Primary Airway Progenitor Cells Validated for In Vitro Toxicology Screening (1R43ES032523-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10111277. Licensed CC0.

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