Evaluation of different media for ex vivo porcine lung culture model

Developing drugs targeting respiratory pathogen is essential to control respiratory diseases. Many experiments have been performed under in vivo situation. However, in vivo experiments have economical and ethical issues. The objective of this study was to determine the possibility of developing an ex vivo lung culture system with possible application for respiratory infection studies. After isolating lungs from naïve pigs, agarose-inflated lung tissues were prepared and sliced manually. These sliced lung tissues were then subsequently placed on 24-well plates. Eight different combinations of media were used to determine the optimum ex vivo lung culture condition. In addition, lung tissues were infected with porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus at a titer of $1{\times}10^4\;TCID_{50}/mL$. Virus growth was confirmed by titration in MARC-145 cells at 2, 4, 6 days post infection (dpi). We found that ex vivo lung culture in physiological environment was not media specific based on histopathology and cytotoxicity. However, under virus-infected condition, thickened alveolar walls in the lung tissues and stable virus titers at 2, 4, 6 dpi were shown in F12K medium suggesting that it was useful for tissue maintenance and virus infection using PRRS virus infected lung tissues. The present study shows the possibility of using porcine ex vivo lung model for respiratory infection studies.