Too close for comfort: common pathogenic mechanisms in lung cancer and fibrosis
Symposium Chairs: E. Brambilla (Grenoble, France), G. Laurent (London, United Kingdom)
Aims: The prognosis for many interstitial lung diseases (ILD), such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is as bad as many cancers, with survival after diagnosis being between 2?5 yrs, if left untreated. Patients with IPF have a greater incidence of lung cancers, probably due to shared risk factors such as smoking. Both diseases are aggressive proliferative disorders in which epithelial?mesenchymal interactions are key to disease pathogensis; these include novel ideas such as epithelial?mesenchymal transition (EMT). This symposium will explore these common pathogenetic mechanisms in detail and should appeal to cancer and ILD researchers, as well as translational physicians working in lung cancer and ILD clinics.