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Hello. My name is Luca Richeldi.
I'm a professor
of respiratory medicine
at the University Hospital
of Southampton
in the United Kingdom.
And today, I will speak about
the diagnosis and treatment
of idiopathic
pulmonary fibrosis.
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So before going into
the specifics and the details
of pulmonary fibrosis,
let me review with you
this recent article published
in the New England
Journal of Medicine.
And discussing
the topic of fibrosis,
which as you see
is defined as a common pathway
to organ injury and failure.
And there are at least
three concepts
that I would like to underscore
with you from this paper.
The first one is that
the mechanism of fibrosis
and the resultant organ failure
account for at least one-third
of deaths worldwide.
And this has not been
recognized properly before,
and that means
that fibrosis together
with other cause of disease
is a major driver in mortality
in every country in the world.
The second concept is that
fibrosis having adverse effects,
basically in all organs,
is a very attractive
therapeutic target,
and even more so because,
and it is the third concept
I would like to discuss with you,
is that contrary to
the widely held perception
that scar is permanent,
we know now from animal models
and from preclinical data
that there is evidence
pointing to the fact
that organ fibrosis
is highly plastic in nature.
That means that the idea
of potentially revert fibrosis
is something that
needs to be considered
as an achievable target
for any therapeutical trial.
