Magnetic levitation

No, it's not a cool magic trick, although it definitely sounds like one. The present way of growing bacteria, tissue, cells etc. involves using the age old Petri dish. The only issue with using a Petri dish for tissue growth is that it is a 2D environment and native tissue grows in a 3D environment. Now, this has worked in the past but a group from Rice University, MD Anderson, and Nano3D Biosciences is working on a new way of growing tissue that will resemble lung tissue more accurately than its 2D counter part.
The process to grow the lung tissue uses magnetic levitation with magnetic nanoparticles as a means of creating an organized 3D coculture of the bronchiole that layers cells in a manner similar to native tissue make-up. The 3D coculture model was assembled from four human cell types in the bronchiole: endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells fibroblasts, and epithelial cells. These cell layers were first cultured in 3D by magnetic levitation, and then manipulated into contact with a custom-made magnetic pen, and again cultured for 48 h.
Using this technique, the lung tissue has the same biochemical signature as native lung tissue. The main purepose of this study was to grow a lung tissue that more resembled native tissue so that researchers could use it to test airborne toxins. With 2-D cultures, it is very difficult to culture cells at the air-liquid interface, which is what is preferred for toxicity testing. As of now there are only research uses for this new technique but it couldn't definitely be used for clinical use in the future! It's even possible this could be used to examine the effect of gaseous radioactive tracers (used for SPECT imaging) on the lungs.


http://www.medgadget.com/2013/01/realistic-3d-lung-tissue-grown-using-magnetic-levitation.html
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ten.TEC.2012.0157