Tulane Researchers Make Breakthrough In Fighting A Leading Cause Of Fungal Pneumonia
Health
Researchers were able to use precision-cut slices of lung tissue to study Pneumocystis species, a fungus that causes Pneumocystis pneumonia in immunosuppressed patients and children.
This innovation overcomes a major hurdle in fungal research — the difficulty of growing this pathogen outside of a living lung — so scientists can more easily test new drugs to fight the infection. The fungus was recently listed among the top 19 fungal priority pathogens by the World Health Organization.
The Tulane model utilizes precision-cut lung slices which retain the complexity and architecture of lung tissue, providing an environment that closely mimics conditions inside the lung. The results were published in mBio, the journal of The American Society for Microbiology.
Researchers used tissue from mice to cultivate two forms of the Pneumocystis fungus—the troph and ascus—for up to 14 days. The viability testing and gene expression analysis they conducted showed the fungus survived over time in the model.
The researchers confirmed the model’s potential for in vitro drug testing. When treated with commonly used medications trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and echinocandins, the expression of Pneumocystis genes was reduced, indicating successful targeting of the fungus.
The Tulane technique reliably generates many uniform lung tissue samples for experimentation from a single lung, enabling high-capacity testing.
The study was led by Ferris T. Munyonho, a Tulane Biomedical Sciences graduate student and a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship after receiving his Bachelors’ of Science from the University of Zimbabwe.