Proteases: at the cutting edge of lung disease
Symposium Chairs: J. Sallenave (Paris, France), S. Stick (Perth (WA), Australia)
Aims: to provide an update on the pathological roles of proteases in lung diseases. Protease deregulation is a constant feature in acute and chronic lung diseases. Until recently, proteases were thought to simply act as protein-degrading enzymes. However, recent ground-breaking research has identified a variety of novel protease substrates that play important roles in lung pathophysiology. These findings suggest that proteases are actually critical pleiotropic orchestrators of the cell behaviour that leads to lung diseases. The symposium will describe and integrate these novel protease research findings. The aim is to bring together leading researchers from different fields of lung disease research with the hope of fostering the exchange of knowledge between not only basic and clinical researchers but also within the lung community.