Legionella in the lung: development of a human ex vivo tissue culture system to study host microbe interactions

Lung infections with Legionella pneumophila may lead to an aggressive pneumonia with a typical histological phenotype. The majority of current investigations focusses either on the late stages of infections in patients, is limited to cell culture experiments or uses rodent models. Therefore we developed a human ex vivo tissue culture model to study the early events of L. pneumophila. Human tissue explants were stimulated with wild-type or replication-deficient mutant strain dotA as well as Outer Membrane Vesicles (OMVs). After stimulation, tissue samples were HOPE-fixed and paraffin-embedded. Paraffin blocks wer…