Patent ID: 8338114

Claim:
A method of assaying a test compound for a therapeutic, allergenic, or cytotoxic activity with three-dimensional human broncho-epithelial tissue-like assemblies comprising: inoculating a rotating wall vessel comprising microcarriers in culture media with mesenchymal bronchial-tracheal cells, wherein said microcarriers and said culture media are selected to have a difference in density from 90% to 95% or 105% to 110%, wherein said difference in density is defined as 100 times the fraction of the microcarrier's density over the culture media's density; growing bronchial-tracheal cells for 24 to 240 hours; inoculating said rotating wall vessel with bronchial epithelium cells to generate a coculture; growing said coculture for 24 to 960 hours to produce tissue-like assemblies wherein said tissue-like assemblies express markers of in vivo respiratory epithelia and display structural characteristics of in vivo respiratory epithelia; dividing said coculture into two or more separate cocultures comprising at least one experimental tissue like assembly and one or more control tissue-like assemblies; incubating said at least one experimental tissue-like assembly and said one or more control tissue-like assemblies under similar conditions; infecting said at least one experimental tissue-like assembly with a virus; proliferating said virus for a predetermined timeframe up to about 504 hours; contacting at least one experimental tissue-like assembly from a first coculture to said test compound, wherein said test compound is an antiviral compound; measuring a phenotypic, genetic or quantitative trait for each tissue-like assemblies; and determining said therapeutic, allergenic, or cytotoxic activity of said antiviral compound by comparing said phenotypic or quantitative trait in said at least one experimental tissue-like assembly to said one or more control tissue-like assemblies.