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The lung – performing nearly the whole gas exchange of the body, being a gate between the environment and our blood, it’s an organ of high importance and complexity. Not only the highly branched structure containing an enormous surface and the very fine alveolar tissue at once, but also the control of surface tension and the numerous protective barriers make it a very special organ to do research on.
However, since next to the therapy of pulmonologic deseases (like bronchial asthma and COPD) the relevance of inhalative application of drugs and the importance of pulmonological toxicological research are steadily increasing, there is a great need for accurate and efficient test models. Apart from animal models, animal-free alternatives are getting developed and produced in order to provide faster, cheaper and primarily more accurate and ethical more justifiable test models.
Following, you will find a collection of links which provide information on existing alternative methods, e.g. which lung models are available, what are the legal requirements. The provided selection of materials is not exhaustive and does not include peer-reviewed publications.