The Institute for Lung Health uncovers the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying maintenance of lung health and their failure in lung disease, and develops etiology-based preventive and regenerative therapies.
The ILH sets up interdisciplinary teams that strive to achieve the following goals using a translational bedside-to-bench and bench-to-bedside approach:
- To identify the key cellular players, signaling networks, and molecular switches and the underlying genetic/epigenetic control mechanisms ensuring the maintenance of lung architecture and its resilience to environmental challenge under healthy conditions.
- To identify the changes in epigenetic control, signaling mechanisms and cellular phenotypes driving pathological remodeling processes with loss of proper lung parenchymal structure and function in acute and chronic pulmonary diseases.
- To harness such knowledge for the development of novel preventive and therapeutic strategies for lung repair and regeneration, employing a broad armamentarium of preclinical approaches (cell culture, animal models, human organoid models, computational modeling; use of compound libraries, high-throughput drug discovery platforms).
- To transfer such novel treatment concepts into the clinical arena (analysis of biobank material and cohorts; development and clinical validation of prognostic and predictive novel biomarkers; phase I and II clinical studies in new preventive/therapeutic strategies employing existent clinical study networks; alliances with industrial partners for further promotion of novel drug development).
Thus, advanced biomedical and biotechnological expertise will be partnered with preclinical and clinical research competence in lung disease to achieve transformative breakthroughs in this field.
