University of Colorado Denver Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Chelsea Magin is developing a lung model to help advance the treatment of lung diseases which affect men and women differently. The artificial lung is made by combining donor cells and tissues with synthetic materials. The result behaves like a real lung—soft when healthy, stiff when sickly—allowing researchers to study diseases like pulmonary fibrosis and cancer more accurately.
This biomedical engineering product makes it possible for Magin and her team from CU Denver and the University of Colorado Anschutz medical campus to study lung disease. “We’re not just conducting research,” Magin said. “We’re combining engineering, medicine, and industry to find treatments that work. It’s one of the ways our biomedical engineering program stands out.”
Lung model has big implications for personalized medicine
In the Magin Lab, they have found differences at the cellular level which have implications for how different patients should be treated. The lab is also working with a California-based company to test pharmaceuticals aimed at treating or eliminating lung diseases, which sees the benefit of using the new model.
Current methods fall short. Many lab-grown cells are studied on flat, rigid surfaces that don’t reflect how lungs function. Animal testing also has limits. As a result, nearly 90% of drugs that work in the lab fail in human trials.
Magin’s model aims to close that gap.
The team removes cells from donor lung tissue and turns them into a powder. That powder is mixed with water and added to synthetic material to make a hydrogel containing both natural and synthetic parts mixed together. That combination of materials mimics lung properties. Once built, the model can be “diseased” and treated, allowing researchers to observe how therapies perform.
For Magin, the work is personal.
“I lived with undiagnosed asthma for 40 years,” she said. “I know what it’s like to not be able to breathe. That drives this work.”
Training the next generation of biomedical engineers
This work brings together an all-female team of students and researchers from the CU Denver and the CU Anschutz campuses. The dual campus program delivers engineering coursework at the downtown campus and then gives students access to classes and laboratory work on the medical campus.
Haley Noelle Bergman, a Ph.D. student in the lab, came to biomedical engineering after working as an EMT during the COVID-19 pandemic. She always wanted to be a doctor, but working as an EMT helped her discover she wanted to be more involved in long-term care and solutions. That’s where biomedical engineering came into play.
“I don’t want to just practice medicine,” Bergman said. “I want to innovate medicine.”
She now studies idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, alongside fellow CU Denver student Mikala Mueller, using the lung model while preparing for medical school. Her work also includes collaborating with physicians and pharmaceutical partners—experience she says reflects the future of health care.
“Engineering, science, and medicine are all intertwined,” she said. “Complex diseases won’t be solved by one field. This kind of collaboration is essential.”
Bergman said she applied to work in Magin’s lab because of the intersection of material science, pulmonary medicine, cell biology, and engineering. Magin worked in industry for years before becoming an academic.
For Rachel Blomberg, the lab manager who spends her days running experiments and providing mentorship to students, the research in the lab is critical to the future of patient health care.
“It’s really hard to study complex chronic diseases,” she said. “What we are doing in the Magin Lab will help us improve the lives of people suffering from chronic lung disease.”
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