Table 2.

Research Opportunities for Advancing Pulmonary Fibrosis

Novel models and research tools to better study pulmonary fibrosis and uncover new therapies •Develop models that recapitulate the evolution from injury through fibrogenesis to resolution •Test drug candidates in the established fibrotic phase of disease •Expand collection of live cells at the time of routine clinical procedures (i.e., bronchoscopy) •Develop a live-cell bank to examine different mutations or gene variants as they relate to disease pathogenesis •Standardize protocols for tissue and sample collection to yield samples from multiple fibrotic lung diseases at various clinical stages •Develop a central repository for single-cell analyses of tissue and models Early disease factors and methods to improve diagnosis •Determine risk factors and mechanistic drivers of disease progression from preclinical disease to pulmonary fibrosis •Develop tools to predict individual risk for progressive pulmonary fibrosis in non–idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis interstitial lung disease •Increase representation across ethnicities for elucidation of genetic risk factors for pulmonary fibrosis •Determine optimal strategies for screening/surveillance in high-risk populations for pulmonary fibrosis (familial pulmonary fibrosis families, connective tissue disease) •Define recommendations for incorporating genetic testing into clinical practice for individuals with established pulmonary fibrosis •Standardize high-resolution computed tomography acquisition parameters to facilitate large-scale radiomic analyses •Develop tools to enhance early diagnosis and disease course prediction Innovative approaches to clinical trial design for pulmonary fibrosis •Incorporate novel imaging and blood-based biomarkers into early-phase clinical trials •Leverage innovative statistical methods to enable adaptive trial design •Develop a trial platform to assess multiple candidate therapies for pulmonary fibrosis across a range of subtypes of pulmonary fibrosis •Synergize trial design to facilitate data sharing and cross-validation of clinical trial results •Increase diversity and inclusion in recruitment and enrollment of patients with pulmonary fibrosis into clinical trials •Develop and validate clinical trial endpoints to support the conduct of adequate and well-controlled studies