The American Thoracic Society (ATS) has premiered a docuseries called “Helping the World to Breathe,” showcasing the society’s commitment to advancing care for people with lung diseases. Over 16 episodes, the series highlights stories from clinicians, researchers, and patients collaborating to advance care. For example, scientists and patients at…
New Docuseries Highlights Efforts to Advance Care for Lung Diseases
The pressure we put on ourselves to live full, “successful” lives can be debilitating. Transplant recipients can be burdened with extremely high expectations for what post-transplant life should look like. Organ transplantation is an incredible gift, but those expectations can cause a lot of emotional stress and guilt. Before I…
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a grant to support research into immune mechanisms that could allow for the reversal of fibrosis, or tissue scarring, in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The $469,034 award went to Narendiran Rajasekaran, PhD, and Archana Varadaraj, PhD, both of whom are assistant…
I never understood the relationship between the heart and lungs before I was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) in 2016. As if learning my lungs would fail from this condition wasn’t hard enough to accept, I was also assigned a cardiologist to monitor my heart health, which is often…
Scientists have developed a new lab-grown three-dimension (3D) microtissue model that replicates the key features of the idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) microenvironment better than other cellular and animal models, and that enables more robust screening of potential therapies. When the model was generated using lung cells collected from IPF…
In my previous column, I described the roller-coaster ride of my lung transplant evaluation. On Aug. 7, 2020, six years after my diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), I was officially placed on the transplant list. Waiting for the call Waiting for the call was both breathtaking…
Reviva Pharmaceuticals is planning to seek the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) permission to begin Phase 2 clinical trials testing its investigational therapy brilaroxazine in people with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). “We … expect to begin regulatory submissions to the FDA…
An inhalable therapeutic is being developed using pressure-treated yeast beta-glucan for people with COVID-19 as well as other severe lung diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Beta-glucans are fiber compounds that are naturally found in the cell walls of grains, bacteria, and fungi, such as yeast. Ceapro, a biotechnology…
The Microbiome Therapeutics Innovation Group (MTIG), a coalition of companies working to develop U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-microbiome-based therapies, announced the addition of Alveolus Bio to its group. Alveolus has more than a decade of research into neutrophilic inflammation — an asthmatic inflammation driven by specific white…
Last week, I wrote a column about needing to slow down as a patient living with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Since its publication, I have spent a lot of time strategizing about how to do that. I am often guilty of saying I need to do something but neglecting…
