CADSET is a pan-European network committed to promoting clinical research in chronic airway diseases. The overarching working hypothesis of CADSET is that Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) represent a continuum of heterogeneous chronic airway diseases that share clinical, functional, imaging and/or biological mechanisms (i.e endotypes), that can be identified by appropriately validated biomarkers, which may constitute novel therapeutic targets.

Multi-level (clinical, functional, imaging and molecular) profiling of well-characterized patients with chronic airways disease, spanning the spectrum of asthma and COPD, that considers both peak lung function achieved in early adulthood and the rate of lung function decline, may lead to the identification of distinct endotypes (and appropriate biomarkers) which may, in turn, inform a mechanism-based disease classification and a more personalized treatment of patients with chronic airways diseases.