COPD, a devastating lung disease affecting over 400 million people worldwide, remains a major global health challenge. With no curative therapy available and a staggering socio-economic burden, the need for innovative solutions has never been greater. For the third time, again initiated by members of the international network COPD-iNET, an international research seminar aims to bring together world-leading scientists, clinicians, and early-career researchers in a unified effort to advance COPD research.
The seminar “Regenerating the Lung – A Multidisciplinary Approach to Combat COPD“, is taking place on November 6-7, 2025, in Prague, Czech Republic, as part of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) congress. It will provide a unique platform to tackle key challenges in COPD research and open new avenues for lung regeneration strategies.
A Unique Global Effort
Organized and chaired by Mareike Lehmann (Institute of Lung Health and Immunity, Helmholtz Munich) together with Suzanne Cloonan (Trinity College Dublin) this seminar is set to bridge the gap between basic, translational, and clinical research. It will be held in collaboration with COPD-iNET, an international Advanced COPD Research Network spearheaded by Önder Yildirim (Director Institute of Lung Health and Immunity, Helmholtz Munich), COPD research has long been fragmented, lacking the interdisciplinary cooperation necessary for groundbreaking discoveries. This initiative seeks to change that by bringing together clinicians, epidemiologists, biologists, pharmacologists, and pathologists, to foster a truly multidisciplinary approach. The goal is to identify knowledge gaps, define novel key research questions, and push the boundaries of COPD research with a focus on early disease pathogenesis, disease phenotyping, and lung regeneration.
Transforming COPD Research – A Heterogeneous Disease
Despite being the third-leading cause of death worldwide, COPD remains poorly understood in terms of its cellular and molecular mechanisms. COPD has long been considered a disease of smoking, but only a fraction of exposed individuals develops the disease, and 25-40% of COPD patients have never smoked. Ample evidence suggests vulnerability for COPD development stems from (epi)genetic risk factors and interaction with environmental exposure across the life course, as early as in childhood, aging of the global population, and poor dietary quality intake combined with sedentary behavior. A major hurdle remains the identification of different disease endotypes, early detection and cellular and molecular mechanisms of early disease development. Despite the heterogeneity of the disease, diagnostic approaches have not markedly changed in decades and patients are not stratified according to condition, explaining therapy and clinical trial failure.
To change this, the COPD-iNET network has been established to connect leading experts and early-career researchers, enabling collaboration on cutting-edge research projects, state-of-the-art human in vitro models, and advanced systems biology approaches.