When scientists want to check something on living tissues, they are used to this layer of cells grown in some special vessel. It is easy to guess that such a two-dimensional layer is not too similar to the real body, where the cells are organized in a three-dimensional structure. And is that really reliable results need to confirm their experiments with these organs, cells which communicate the most natural way.

Bronchiole, surrounded by the alveoli (photo Dr. Fred Hossler).

But the experiments on the body or on animals is not always convenient for purely methodological considerations. A good alternative would be three-dimensional, and not two-dimensional cell cultures. But how to grow 3D culture? Researchers from rice University (USA) propose to use magnetic levitation is the same, which moved Maglev trains, trains on a magnetic cushion.

Scientists set out to construct an "air capillary" easy - bronchiole, which consists of cells of four kinds: cells, endothelial cells, cells of smooth muscle tissue and fibroblasts. For growing 3D crops method was used, developed in 2009 by company Nano3D Biosciences. For three-dimensional colony was used tiny magnetic balls, which were introduced inside living cells; the balls were made of absolutely inert material and the cell is not harmed. The scientists collected bronchiole literally manually, combining with special magnetic manipulator cells are of four kinds.

Eventually constructed bronchiole, as the researchers write in the journal Tissue Engineering Part C: Methods, was almost "identical to natural": anyway, biochemical tests of differences from usual, natural fabrics could not be found. This bronchiole, according to the doctors, here and now to use for the various Toxicological tests. At least to all sorts of toxins that we get airborne, it will respond with more natural than the flat cell culture.