Surrogate Lung Tissue as a Platform to Test TBX Weapons

The goal of this proposal is the production of a designer engineered tissue construct (ETC), a surrogate lung patch-like structure, which will be used to assess the damage induced by thermobaric (TBX) weapons. The information garnered from surrogate-lung-patch tests will be used to help devise effective countermeasures against TBX weapons as well as to reduce the need for costly and often controversial animal studies. The result of this work will be the development of an enabling technology platform that will create new material "patches" not only as surrogate constructs to test TBX blasts, but also as regenerative constructs for a variety of lung damages that may result from TBX blasts.