Mucociliary Transport Device Construction and Application to Study Mucociliary Clearance

Well-differentiated air-liquid interface cultures of airway epithelial cells produce and secrete mucus and have abundant cilia that beat in the apical fluid. In cultures, this ciliary beating is not well coordinated or occurs in small focal areas so the resulting mucociliary transport (MCT) is only linear over short distances. We present a method which induces ciliated cells in cultures to align during growth. The cells align along the axis of a defined circular track, thus producing a well-coordinated rotational transport which is effectively linear on length scales of ciliated cells. These modified inserts – referred to as mucociliary transport devices (MCTDs) – are simple to prepare and result reproducibly in a high percentage of cultures demonstrating complete circular transport (CCT).