Miniature Airways Grown In A Lab Reveal Which Animals Flu Can Infect

InnovationScienceMiniature Airways Grown In A Lab Reveal Which Animals Flu Can InfectByJohn Drake,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. John Drake is a professor at the University of Georgia. Follow AuthorApr 28, 2026, 09:52am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.An adult red panda (Ailurus fulgens) climbing a tree branch at Cotswold Wildlife Park in Oxfordshire, taken on May 8, 2012. (Photo by Chris George/N-Photo Magazine/Future via Getty Images)Future via Getty ImagesThere is no ethical way to experimentally infect a red panda with influenza. The same goes for dama gazelles, Goeldi’s monkeys and most of the wild species that virologists would like to understand as potential flu hosts. Experimental infection studies — the gold standard for assessing susceptibility — require deliberately sickening animals, and for endangered or protected species that is off the table. This leaves a hole in pandemic preparedness exactly where it matters. We do not know which wild animals can catch and spread the viruses we worry about most.A team led by researchers at the Centre de Recerca en Sanitat Animal, an animal health research institute in Barcelona, has found a way around the problem. In a study published in Emerging Microbes & Infections, Ferran Tarrés-Freixas, Gerardo Ceada and colleagues report that they grew airway organoids from ten wildlife and livestock species using a single standardized protocol. These are tiny, self-organizing clusters of respiratory tissue. Cells extracted from postmortem lung or tracheal samples are embedded in a gel matrix, where they spontaneously assemble into three-dimensional structures that mirror a living airway. No animal needs to be deliberately infected or harmed. The tissue comes from animals that died or were euthanized for unrelated reasons.The team infected these miniature airways with two influenza A...