Cultivation and aerosolization of for modeling pulmonary inhalation exposure.

is a hydrophilic fungal species commonly found as a contaminant in water-damaged building materials. Although several studies have suggested that exposure elicits a variety of adverse health effects, the ability to characterize the pulmonary immune responses to exposure is limited by delivery methods that do not replicate environmental exposure. This study aimed to develop a method of aerosolization to better model inhalation exposures. An acoustical generator system (AGS) was previously developed and utilized to aerosolize and deliver fungal spores to mice housed in a multi-animal nose-only exposure chamber. In this study, methods for cultivating, heat-inactivating, and aerosolizing two macrocyclic trichothecene-producing strains of using the AGS are described. In addition to conidia, acoustical generation of one strain of resulted in the aerosolization of fungal fragments (<2 µm aerodynamic diameter) derived from conidia, phialides, and hyphae that initially comprised 50% of the total fungal particle count but was reduced to less than 10% over the duration of aerosolization. Acoustical generation of heat-inactivated did not result in a similar level of fragmentation. Delivery of dry, unextracted using these aerosolization methods resulted in pulmonary inflammation and immune cell infiltration in mice inhaling viable, but not heat-inactivated . These methods of growth and aerosolization allow for the delivery of fungal bioaerosols to rodents that may better simulate natural exposure within water-damaged indoor environments.