The coordinators of the disease area Diffuse Parenchymal Lung Disease (DPLD) of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL), Anne Hilgendorff and Andreas Günther, also had to take the circumstances into account: due to Corona, they organised a virtual annual meeting 2020 together with the newly appointed heads of individual scientific areas of this disease area.
The meeting was a complete success with top-class science and over 50 participating scientists from the various DZL sites. A broad spectrum of topics, methods and aspects highlighted the progress in the complex field of pulmonary fibrosis with contributions ranging from "Single cell analysis of airway cell senescence" to "Deep learning-based analysis of neonatal MRIs" and "Cellular senescence in lung aging and CLDs" as well as "Development of novel antifibrotic therapeutics by phenotypic drug screening in human fibrosis models".
Prizes for the best publication in the disease area since the last meeting were awarded for one experimental and one clinical paper. The following were awarded 500 euros each by Olink Proteomics (Uppsala, Sweden):
Vahid Kheirollahi, author of the experimental paper "Metformin induces lipogenic differentiation in myofibroblasts to reverse lung fibrosis" and Prof. Jürgen Behr, author of the clinical paper "Survival and course of lung function in the presence or absence of antifibrotic treatment in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: long-term results of the INSIGHTS-IPF registry".
The meeting was made possible by the organisational work of the two Munich medical doctoral students Friederike Häfner and Lena Haist - in the spirit of promoting outstanding young researchers.