n=41 What mini-lungs in a dish might tell us about COVID-19

N Equals One

In this episode we speak with Aaron Carlin, MD, PhD, and Sandra Leibel, MD, assistant professors and physician-scientists at UC San Diego School of Medicine. Carlin studies viruses such as Zika virus and Leibel has developed “mini lungs” – stem cell-based organoids that grow in a petri dish in the lab, where she can study diseases that affect newborn lungs. That’s what they were doing six months ago, anyway. Then SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that has caused the COVID 19 pandemic, entered our lives. Carlin and Leibel quickly teamed up to explore what happens to the lungs when they are infected with SARS-CoV-2, and how we might be able to mitigate that damage.