Primary culture of airway epithelial cells is a valuable model for the study of lung disease and has been crucial for understanding the biology and therapy of many childhood diseases including asthma, respiratory virus infection, and cystic fibrosis, a major genetic lung disease of children. This Core Resource provides primary culture airway epithelial cell preparations from human and mouse for use by investigators studying basic epithelial cell lung biology and therapeutic strategies for lung diseases in children. Cells in these cultures are differentiated into ciliated and secretory types, to provide a powerful model that is vital for research in a wide variety of childhood lung diseases. The Core also has a tissue repository of normal and diseased lung epithelial cells, and provides consultation and training of investigators in culture methods, analysis and epithelial cell manipulation.

This core initiative began in May 2007, with the major goal of generating primary cultures of cells derived from respiratory tract tissues; these cell cultures enhance and accelerate the progress of current investigators and also help new investigators to study respiratory diseases in children. Primary cultures require specific expertise and are labor intensive and inefficient for small laboratories to produce, but have become the research standard for investigation of disease pathophysiology and drug testing. To date, the core has generated approximately 150 preparations over its 34 months to provide cells for laboratories of 20 Washington University principal investigators from nine different university departments. Studies supported by this core include those related to lung development, asthma, cystic fibrosis, respiratory virus infection, bronchiectasis, lung transplantation, and nanotechnology. These studies have generated data for publications, grant submission, and funding of new grant proposals, thus advancing research in lung disease.