COPD-iNET

About the network

Next SYMPOSIUM 6-7 November 2025

Prague, Czech Republic

ATS Assembly Award for LHI Director Ali Önder Yildirim

American Thoracic Society awards Önder Yildirim for “Research Excellence and Service by an International Member” for his high impact research, contributing to the understanding and treatment of lung diseases ... read more

Prof. Dr. Önder Yildirim, Director of the Institute of Lung Health and Immunity (LHI/Helmholtz Munich) and Institute of Experimental Pneumology (Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich) received the ATS Assembly Award on RCMB Research Excellence and Service by an International Member, chosen by the Assembly on Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology (RCMB) Award Selection Committee.

With this renowned award, the American Thoracic Society (ATS) acknowledges researchers with primary appointment outside of the United States or Canada who have an established record of cutting-edge research that contributes to the understanding and treatment of lung diseases. The ATS also recognizes scientists who follow it’s mission “to promote the long-range goal to decrease morbidity and mortality from respiratory disorders and life-threatening acute illnesses through an improved understanding of the biological basis of lung disease”.

“It is a tremendous honor to receive this recognition from the American Thoracic Society,” said Prof. Dr. Önder Yildirim, who is also Director of the CPC-M, the Munich site of the German Center of Lung Research (DZL). “This award reflects the dedication and excellence of our international team at LHI and CPC-M to advancing our lung research through collaboration, innovation, and a shared vision to improve lung health worldwide.”

The award was presented at the ATS International Conference, May 2025 in San Francisco. Congratulations!

About ATS/RCMB:

Founded in 1905, the American Thoracic Society is the world’s leading medical society dedicated to accelerating the advancement of global respiratory health through multidisciplinary collaboration, education, and advocacy. Core activities of the Society’s more than 16,000 members in 133 countries are focused on leading scientific discoveries, advancing professional development, impacting global health, and transforming patient care.
The Assembly on Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology (RCMB) serves as a vibrant hub for its diverse membership across the globe, thus enhancing the respiratory science community.

Our vision is to expand the understanding of COPD pathomechanisms and translate our knowledge into novel therapies to reduce the burden of COPD on patients and society.

The network´s primary focus is the advancement of translational COPD research by discussing ongoing projects, cutting edge human in vitro models, state-of-the art systems biology approaches and clinical cohorts. We strive to identify and enable synergies to facilitate the discovery of novel COPD pathomechanisms. By fostering new collaborations and ideas to transform our understanding of COPD, we aim to ignite novel research directions and therapeutic avenues thereby paving the way to eliminate COPD.

To this end, we bring together world-wide experts on basic, preclinical and clinical COPD research in monthly online meetings and in-person meetings at major respiratory conferences. Once per year we bring together all members in a COPD-iNET symposium (2023 in Munich). Developing a database for sharing resources, expertise, education, and mentoring is a priority, in conjunction with collaborative consortia to be competitive in high level funding opportunities.

If you want to join the network, please reach out to us.

COPD -iNET

About our Research

COPD

Objectives

The seminar aims to bring together experts from different disciplines (clinicians, epidemiologists, biologists, pharmacologists, pathologists), both members and non-members of the Advanced COPD Research Network to:

Identify knowledge gaps in COPD research approached from a multidisciplinary perspective, focusing on regeneration.
Define novel key questions on translational COPD research focusing on early disease pathogenesis and disease phenotypes/endotypes to enable regeneration.
Strengthen and expand the existing COPD Research Network among leading global experts and early-career rising stars to support researchers at many levels.

Outcomes

A state-of-the-art review article in the European Respiratory Journal, written by a group of early-career researchers attending the seminar under the guidance of experienced COPD researchers.
A second educational-focused review for publication in Breathe with a focus on residents in respiratory medicine written by clinical early-career researcher members, with the support of experienced researchers.
A follow-up webinar on the ERS Respiratory Channel, organised by the research seminar chairs.
The expansion of the Advanced COPD Research Network.

Overview

COPD is a progressive pulmonary disorder, especially amongst the elderly, presenting with largely irreversible airflow limitation, a result of chronic bronchitis and/or irreversible damage of the lung tissue (emphysema).

COPD is the third-leading cause of death worldwide, affecting more than 400-600 million people globally. It kills over three million people per year, with no curative therapy currently available.

The staggering socio-economic burden that comes with COPD treatment is also now surpassing any other disease. Among 23 EU member states, the average prevalence is 15-20%, which increases with age. COPD is a heterogeneous disease encompassing multiple organs beyond the lungs. Both pulmonary and extrapulmonary pathology cause a high clinical and societal burden.

COPD has long been considered a disease of smoking, but only a fraction of exposed individuals develop the disease, and 25-40% of COPD patients have never smoked. Ample evidence suggests vulnerability for COPD development stems from (epi)genetic risk factors and interaction with environmental exposure across the life course, as early as in childhood, aging of the global population, and poor dietary quality intake combined with sedentary behaviour. A major hurdle remains the identification of different disease endotypes, early detection and cellular and molecular mechanisms of early disease development. Despite the heterogeneity of the disease, diagnostic approaches have not markedly changed in decades and patients are not stratified according to condition, explaining therapy and clinical trial failure. To change this, we need a better understanding of pathophysiological mechanisms.

Here, a major chance lies in the international collaboration of basic, translational and clinical researchers, which is so far not well organised. To change this, a group of researchers, including the two seminar chairs and spearheaded by Önder Yildirim, have recently established an international Advanced COPD Research Network.

The network´s primary focus is the advancement of translational COPD research by discussing ongoing projects, cutting-edge human in vitro models, state-of-the art systems biology approaches and clinical cohorts. By fostering new collaborations and ideas to transform our understanding of COPD, we aim to ignite novel research directions and therapeutic avenues thereby paving the way to eliminate COPD.

The network identified key areas for future COPD research that align with current priority topics of Assembly 3 (‘Cellular plasticity in lung regeneration’, ‘cell-cell interactions in lung physiology and disease’, ‘immune metabolic changes in lung disease’, ‘state-of-the-art models to answer clinical questions’); Assembly 5 (priority topics: ‘No cell is an island – clinical implications of immunological crosstalk in the lung’); Assembly 7 (priority topics: ‘Prematurity related lung diseases’); Assembly 1 (Priority topics: ‘Functional lung imaging); and Assembly 14 (Priority topics: ‘Advances in thoracic imaging’).

The four key ares of the network are:

Endotyping of COPD cohorts
Systems biology
Immunity
Repair and regeneration

The network aims at a) exchanging scientific knowledge, b) sharing models and resources c) connecting the right people to facilitate joined research projects and grant proposals. The network identified key areas for future COPD research: 1. COPD cohorts, 2. Systems biology, 3. Immunity, and 4. Repair and regeneration.

Collaborators, G.B.D.C.R.D. (2020). Prevalence and attributable health burden of chronic respiratory diseases, 1990-2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The Lancet. Respiratory medicine 8, 585-596. 10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30105-3.

Lange, P., Celli, B., Agusti, A., Boje Jensen, G., Divo, M., Faner, R., Guerra, S., Marott, J.L., Martinez, F.D., Martinez-Camblor, P., et al. (2015). Lung-Function Trajectories Leading to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. The New England journal of medicine 373, 111-122. 10.1056/NEJMoa1411532.

May, S.M., and Li, J.T. (2015). Burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: healthcare costs and beyond. Allergy and asthma proceedings 36, 4-10. 10.2500/aap.2015.36.3812.

Stolz, D., Mkorombindo, T., Schumann, D.M., Agusti, A., Ash, S.Y., Bafadhel, M., Bai, C., Chalmers, J.D., Criner, G.J., Dharmage, S.C., et al. (2022). Towards the elimination of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a Lancet Commission. Lancet 400, 921-972. 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)01273-9.

Vogelmeier, C.F., Criner, G.J., Martinez, F.J., Anzueto, A., Barnes, P.J., Bourbeau, J., Celli, B.R., Chen, R., Decramer, M., Fabbri, L.M., et al. (2017). Global Strategy for the Diagnosis, Management, and Prevention of Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease 2017 Report. GOLD Executive Summary. American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine 195, 557-582. 10.1164/rccm.201701-0218PP. [/read]

Immunity

Led by Thomas Conlon / Francesca Polverino

Inflammation has long been considered as the main hallmark of COPD pathogenesis. However, with the tools and techniques available today, we can now leverage our understanding of the lung immune microenvironment to dissect out immune cell interactions and consequences to lung injury and repair, and to ultimately identify novel immune therapeutic targets. Our network aims at bringing together COPD immunologists, to foster further collaborative efforts to embrace this vision. ... read more

We have recently identified the importance of epigenetic regulation of myeloid cells in driving COPD pathogenesis (Gunes Gunsel et al., 2022) and furthered our understanding of the contribution of adaptive immune cells to COPD pathogenesis by highlighting the role of B and T cells and lymphotoxin signalling in the onset and progression of emphysema (Conlon et al., 2020). We are implementing the combined use of omics techniques, such as single cell RNAsequencing, spatial transcriptomics, (Polverino et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2022), and radiomics (Sullivan et al., 2019), to understand how the integration of omics can lead to a better characterization of COPD phenotypes and endotypes. By working together, we hope we can pave the way to disease-modifying therapies that target only deleterious immune cell subsets or their harmful products in a selected subset of COPD with off-targeted immune responses.

Conlon, T.M., John-Schuster, G., Heide, D., Pfister, D., Lehmann, M., Hu, Y., Ertuz, Z., Lopez, M.A., Ansari, M., Strunz, M., et al. (2020). Inhibition of LTbetaR signalling activates WNT-induced regeneration in lung. Nature 588, 151-156. 10.1038/s41586-020-2882-8.
Gunes Gunsel, G., Conlon, T.M., Jeridi, A., Kim, R., Ertuz, Z., Lang, N.J., Ansari, M., Novikova, M., Jiang, D., Strunz, M., et al. (2022). The arginine methyltransferase PRMT7 promotes extravasation of monocytes resulting in tissue injury in COPD. Nature communications 13, 1303. 10.1038/s41467-022-28809-4.
Polverino, F., Mirra, D., Yang, C.X., Esposito, R., Spaziano, G., Rojas-Quintero, J., Sgambato, M., Piegari, E., Cozzolino, A., Cione, E., et al. (2022). Similar programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression profile in patients with mild COPD and lung cancer. Sci Rep 12, 22402. 10.1038/s41598-022-26650-9.
Sullivan, J.L., Bagevalu, B., Glass, C., Sholl, L., Kraft, M., Martinez, F.D., Bastarrika, G., de-Torres, J.P., San Jose Estepar, R., Guerra, S., and Polverino, F. (2019). B Cell Adaptive Immune Profile in Emphysema-Predominant COPD. Am J Respir Crit Care Med 200, 1434-1439. 10.1164/rccm.201903-0632LE.
Yang, C.X., Tomchaney, M., Landecho, M.F., Zamacona, B.R., Marin Oto, M., Zulueta, J., Malo, J., Knoper, S., Contoli, M., Papi, A., et al. (2022). Lung Spatial Profiling Reveals a T Cell Signature in COPD Patients with Fatal SARS-CoV-2 Infection. Cells 11. 10.3390/cells11121864.

Clinical Cohorts

Led by Ian Adcock / Enid Neptune / Yohannes Tesfaigzi

We recognize the importance of clinical cohorts in facilitating reverse translational approaches (Key Area 1) [1]. Due to the multifactorial nature of COPD, research requires large and well-defined clinical cohorts to understand the pathogenesis of the disease. By combining well-defined clinical cohorts, researchers can identify disease endotypes and design effective clinical trials. In the era of “omics,” where genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics are considered essential for precision medicine, linking existing COPD ... read more

System Medicine

Led by Theodore S. Kapellos / Maor Sauler

The advent of omics technologies and the development of powerful computational approaches have revolutionized the field of respiratory medicine and now allow the study of patient heterogeneity, as well as the molecular pathways that drive chronic lung diseases at single-cell resolution. One of COPD-iNET research pillars focuses on the application of systems medicine methodologies and bioinformatics analysis to clinical samples and animal models of COPD with the aim to characterize the ... read more

Exp11_180722-Extended Depth of Focus-01_s2c0x13999-6390y0-5724(1)

Regeneration

Led by Mareike Lehmann / Reinoud Gosens:

The goal of the COPD network is to contribute to regenerating COPD lungs, which is why key area 4 is focused on understanding the impaired repair and regeneration capacity in COPD lungs (Melo-Narvaez et al., 2020; Wu et al., 2022). Cigarette smoke exposure, air pollution, respiratory infections and aging contribute to cellular senescence and to impaired lung regeneration in COPD. Imbalanced immunity likely impacts regenerative capacity (Conlon et al., 2020), ... read more

Participating Groups

Previous Next

Yildirim / Conlon Lab, LHI

Immunopathology of COPD

We want to understand how the immune system drives tissue injury and modulates tissue repair and regeneration in COPD to devise novel therapeutic targets to ultimately reverse chronic lung disease – particularly COPD.

COPD-iNET

About the network

Next SYMPOSIUM 6-7 November 2025

Prague, Czech Republic

ATS Assembly Award for LHI Director Ali Önder Yildirim

COPD -iNET

On this page

About our Research

COPD

Objectives

Outcomes

Overview

Immunity

Clinical Cohorts

System Medicine

Regeneration

Participating Groups

Yildirim / Conlon Lab, LHI

Immunopathology of COPD

Kapellos Lab, LHI

Immunoregulation in obstructive airway diseases

Lehmann Lab, LHI,

Professor of translational inflammation research, Philips University Marburg Lung Inflammaging

Irfan Rahman Lab, URMC

Oxidant and cigarette smoke-mediated lung inflammation

Benam Lab, UPMC

Translational and Multidisciplinary Lung Microengineering Lab

Tien Peng Lab, UCSF

The Fibroblast´s Guide to the Galaxy

Singanayagam Lab, ICL

Investigating the role of respiratory tract mucins in mucosal host-defence

PulmoScience Lab, LUMC

Lung repair and regeneration

Donelly / Barnes Lab, ICL

The role of inflammageing and immunosenescence

Cloonan Lab, TCD

Metabolism in Lung Biology and Disease

Schmeck Lab, iLung

Extracellular Vesicles and Infection in lung diseases

Polverino Lab, BCMH

understanding the immune mechanisms underlying COPD

Outtz Reed Lab, WCM

Thrombin activation and lung lymphatic thrombosis in the pathogenesis of COPD

Philip Hansbro Lab, UTS

Centenary UTS Centre for Inflammation

Reinoud Gosens Lab, UoG

Professor Translational Pharmacology

Silke Meiners Lab, CAU Kiel

Chair Immunoproteasome Research, CAU Kiel

Irfan Rahman Lab, URMC

Oxidant and cigarette smoke-mediated lung inflammation

Jurkowska Lab, Cardiff University, UK

Lung Epigenetics Group

DUPIN Lab, University of Bordeaux, France

Interdisciplinary approaches for COPD understanding

TESFAIGZI Lab, Harvard Medical School, USA

Susceptibility of the Airway Epithelium in Initiating Chronic Diseases

Events / Seminare / News

Thursday-Friday November 6-7th 2025

Sun-Thue Nov 3-5th

Thu Feb 22nd

Thu Mar 28th

Thu Apr 25th

May meeting in person at ATS

Thu June 27th

Thu July 25th

LHI Scientists co-host conference on Molecular Mechanisms of Lung Disease

Organizers

Prof. Dr. Ali Önder Yildirim

Founder

Director of Lung Health and Immunity, Helmholtz Centrum, Munich, Germany

Dr. Thomas Conlon

Head of research group “Immunopathology of COPD”

Prof. Dr. Mareike Lehmann

Head of research group “Lung inflammaging”

Dr. Theodoros Kapellos

Head of research group “Immunoregulations in obstructive respiratory diseases”

Prof. Dr. Reinoud Gosens

Professor Translational Pharmacology, University of Groningen

Francesca Polverino, MD, PhD

Professor of translational inflammation research, Philips University Marburg
Lung Inflammaging

Thursday-Friday November 6-7^th2025

Sun-Thue Nov 3-5^th

Thu Feb 22^nd

Thu Mar 28^th

Thu Apr 25^th

Thu June 27^th

Thu July 25^th