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Lung development is governed by epithelial-mesenchymal interactions. These pathways are recapitulated during injury and repair. This conference will focus on understanding key processes underlying lung development, injury and repair and their dysregulation in the context of aging, environmental exposures in different species, with the hope of better understanding disease development and to discover novel therapeutic approaches.
 
We will highlight emerging concepts in airway and parenchymal epithelial and mesenchymal cell biology such as stem cell and progenitor heterogeneity, and adaptive and maladaptive regenerative mechanisms. The newly minted sessions will also encompass technological advances in single cell and spatial multiomic profiling approaches for dissecting, cellular neighbourhoods, cell-cell communication that contribute to epithelial and mesenchymal cell proliferation, plasticity, cell fate decisions in development, repair, and fibrosis. The focused themes will also discuss our current understanding of how genetic, epigenetics, and metabolic changes rewires cell fates to influence lung development, repair, and diseases; and characterize epithelial-mesenchymal interrelationships that maintain lung homeostasis and orchestrate repair and regeneration. The entire program has been designed to achieve a better understanding of the key clinical research issues and how they relate to basic mechanistic investigation.

Key Sessions

• Keynote and emerging topics
• Novel models and technologies to study pulmonary fibrosis
• Mechanisms of repair in lung disease
• Pathways regulating lung development and dysregulated/activated in lung fibrosis
• Aging, fibrosis and degenerative lung diseases
• Environmental impact on lung diseases
• Mechanotransduction In lung development and fibrosis
• Aging and lung fibrosis

Confirmed Invited Speakers

Maria Basil (University of Pennsylvania)
Saverio Bellusci (Justus Liebig University Giessen)
Patricia Brazee (Harvard University)
Navdeep Chandel (Northwestern University) 
Astrid Gillich (Calico Life Sciences)
Brigitte Gomperts (UCLA) 
Janine Gote-Schniering (University of Bern)
BRIDGING SCALES: MULTISCALE IMAGING-OMICS TO DISSECT THE FIBROTIC LUNG NICHE
Gisli Jenkins (Imperial College London)
Renata Jurkowska (Cardiff University)
EPIGENETIC REGULATION OF HUMAN LUNG REPAIR
Melanie Königshoff (University of Pittsburgh)
Darrell Kotton (Boston University)
PLURIPOTENT STEM CELLS TO MODEL FIBROTIC LUNG EPITHELIAL-MESENCHYMAL INTERACTIONS
Claudia Loebel (University of Pennsylvania)
LOCAL PHOTO-CROSSLINKING OF NATIVE LUNG TISSUE MATRIX REGULATES ALVEOLAR EPITHELIAL CELL MECHANOSENSING AND FUNCTION
Frank McCormack (University of Cincinnati)
Paul Noble (UCLA) 
Tien Peng (University of California San Francisco)
Jason Rock (Genentech)
MOLECULAR REGULATION OF LINEAGE PLASTICITY IN LUNG INJURY AND FIBROSIS
Rajkumar Savai (Justus Liebig University Giessen)
Micha Sam Brickman Raredon (Yale School of Medicine)
TISSUE SYSTEMS BIOLOGY & LUNG REGENERATION: A TRANSLATIONAL OPPORTUNITY
Jie Sun (University of Virginia)
Jennifer Sucre (Vanderbilt University) 
Nan Tang (National Institute of Biological Sciences)
Bob Varelas (Boston University)
Lisandra Vila Ellis (Northwestern University)
Eszter Vladar (University of Colorado)
Carola Voss (Hannover Medical School)
Jarod Zepp (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia)
DIVERGENT MYOFIBROBLASTS SCULPT THE LUNG ALVEOLUS
Bin Zhou (Chinese Academy of Sciences)
TRACING EPITHELIAL CELL FATE BY DUAL RECOMBINASES

Target Audience 

• Lung developmental biologist
• Stem cell researchers
• Fibrosis researchers
• Pulmonary fibrosis researchers

Educational Need

It is known that lung developmental pathways are reactivated in pulmonary fibrosis, yet few if any meetings bring lung developmental biologists and researchers studying lung fibrosis together. This meeting will provide a unique opportunity to bring these two fields together.