Japan conducts COVID-19 research using bronchial organoids

A group of researchers at Kyoto University, Japan has developed two in-vitro models to study SARS-CoV-2, a bronchial-organoids model (BO) and a BO-derived air-liquid interface model (BO-ALI), and showed that they can be used for drug screening for infectious diseases including COVID-19. An in vitro lung model that faithfully reproduces the human respiratory organ is essential for conducting COVID-19 drug screening. BO and alveolar organoids are excellent tools for faithfully mimicking the human respiratory organ and are expected to be applied to COVID-19 research. In this study, the research team developed two human bronchial models, BO and BO-ALI. SARS-CoV-2 infection experiments confirmed that the infection efficiency in BO-ALI was more than 2,000 times higher than that in BO. The researchers confirmed the anti-viral effect of therapeutic agents such as remdesivir, molnupiravir, and camostat, using BO-ALI. Comparative analyses of eight SARS-CoV-2 variants, including the omicron strain, showed that the infection efficiency in BO-ALI of the Omicron was slightly lower than those of the other variants.