Fighting Deadly Diseases with Engineered Human Tissue: UCF Research Team Pioneers New Platform
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Mosquitos have been called the world's deadliest animal, as vector-borne illnesses, including those from mosquitos cause more than 700,000 deaths worldwide each year. Malaria, dengue, Zika virus and West Nile virus are all transmitted by mosquitos. In an effort to help fight these deadly diseases, a multidisciplinary team led by College of Medicine biomedical researcher Bradley Jay Willenberg with Mollie Jewett (UCF Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences) and Andrew Dickerson (University of Tennessee) have engineered tissue with human cells that mosquitoes love to bite and feed upon.
The team lined 3D capillary gel biomaterials with human cells to create engineered tissue and then infused it with blood. Testing showed mosquitoes readily bite and blood feed on the constructs. Scientists hope to use this new platform to study how pathogens that mosquitoes carry impact and infect human cells and tissues. Presently, researchers rely largely upon animal models and cells cultured on flat dishes for such investigations. Further, the new system holds great promise for blood feeding mosquito species that have proven difficult to rear and maintain as colonies in the laboratory, an important practical application.
The team's work was published in the journal Insects. Captured on video, Willenberg observed mosquitoes enthusiastically blood feeding from the engineered tissue, much as they would from a human host. This demonstration represents the achievement of a critical milestone for the technology: ensuring the tissue constructs were appetizing to the mosquitoes.
Willenberg hopes to adapt his new platform for application to other vectors such as ticks, which spread Lyme disease. He said he hopes to reduce human suffering by providing something that helps us learn about mosquitoes, intervene with diseases and, in some way, keep mosquitoes away from people.
Willenberg received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Florida and continued there for his postdoctoral training and then in scientist, adjunct scientist and lecturer positions. He joined the UCF College of Medicine in 2014, where he is currently an assistant professor of medicine.
The new platform holds great promise for helping fight deadly diseases transmitted by mosquitos. By creating engineered tissue that mosquitoes love to bite and feed upon, researchers can better study how pathogens that mosquitoes carry impact and infect human cells and tissues. This technology could also help mosquito control organizations to keep mosquitos away from people and reduce human suffering.
This groundbreaking research was published in the journal Insects and is a major step forward in the fight against vector-borne illnesses. With the help of this new platform, researchers can now better understand the impact of mosquito-borne diseases and develop innovative mosquito surveillance, control and research tools.
