# Lung-on-a-chip enables dynamic imaging of pulmonary lung tissue in response to aerosolized nanoparticles

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN · 2020 · $45,520

## Abstract

Project Summary
 Nanoparticles are moving towards use as consumer products and therapeutic agents, and
are gaining prevalence as environmental toxins. There is increasing concern on the impact that
nanoparticles have on human health, specifically the lung. The lung is the most susceptible region
of the body to interact with environmental particulates. Current studies of nanoparticle interaction
with cells lacks insight on the mechanisms that results in inflammation and cell death.
Nanoparticle exposure in static monocultures may not predict the complex biochemical responses
triggered in the human lung. Expensive, ethically challenged animal models, lack the capability
for mechanistic studies. Whereas, lung-on-a-chip microfluidic platforms offer increasingly
sophisticated methods to study the in vivo lung response. These platforms do so by applying
hydrodynamic and mechanical forces to cocultures of endothelial and differentiated epithelial cells
to mimic the physiological environment within the alveolar-capillary interface. There is an
increasing need to use these dynamic platforms to study the interaction of nanoparticles on lung
tissue. To this end, my fabricated lung-on-a-chip platform enables monitoring intercellular fluid
leakage and live cell imaging in response to induced inflammation. With these tools, the project
seeks to use dynamic imaging to study the impact of aerosolized nanoparticles on lung tissue.
The tissue will be monitored for the progression of inflammation and nanoparticle migration.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9759650
- **Project number:** 5F31ES029833-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
- **Principal Investigator:** Whitney Sinclair
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $45,520
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-01-01 → 2022-04-19

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9759650

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9759650, Lung-on-a-chip enables dynamic imaging of pulmonary lung tissue in response to aerosolized nanoparticles (5F31ES029833-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9759650. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*