Create a chip to better understand the complex human immune system

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it clear that, immune system is so complex, scientists still don’t fully understand the sophisticated defense mechanisms that help protect us from microscopic intruders.

Why do some people have no symptoms when infected with SARS-CoV2 while others have severe symptoms and body aches? Why can’t some people weather the “cytokine storms” that their bodies create? We still do not have the answers to these questions. However, scientists today have a new tool to help solve the mysteries of the immune system.

A team of researchers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Applied Bioengineering (USA) has transplanted human B cells and T cells into a tiny liquid chip device called the Organ Chip and created lymphatic cysts – structures located in the lymphatic core and many other parts of the human body, capable of indirectly triggering an immune response. These cysts have various chambers containing B and T cells, which together produce a cascade of responses that lead to a full immune response when exposed to a particular antigen.

Besides allowing researchers to test the normal function of the immune system, these lymphatic chip (LF) cysts could also be used to predict immune responses to various vaccines and help select the most perfect one, greatly improving current preclinical models. The results of the study were published in the journal Advanced Science.

Study author Dr Girija Goyal, at the Wyss Institute, said: ‘Animals used to be the gold standard research models for developing and testing new vaccines, but their immune systems are vastly different from those of a new vaccine. Our LF chip provides a way to study immune responses in humans when infected or vaccinated, and could significantly accelerate the speed and quality of future vaccines.”

The study’s second author, Pranav Prabhala, a technician at the Wyss Institute, said: “The findings are particularly encouraging because they confirm that we already have a working model that can work. used to analyze some of the complexities of the human immune system, such as responses to various pathogens.”

Currently, researchers at Wyss are working with pharmaceutical companies and the Gates Foundation to use the LF Chip to test different vaccines and adjuvants.

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