Researchers identify why lung scarring persists in IPF and reverse it in models

IPF patients typically survive only 3-5 years after diagnosis, facing progressive breathlessness and loss of function from irreversible lung scarring.

For generations, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis has been understood as a sentence without appeal — a slow hardening of the lungs that medicine could slow but never undo. Now, researchers at National Jewish Health have traced the persistence of that scarring to a single molecular signal, a protein called BCL-2 that keeps the cells responsible for fibrosis alive long past their purpose. The discovery, confirmed in human tissue and tested with an already-approved drug, raises a possibility that has long seemed out of reach: that even established lung scarring might one day be reversed.

Researchers identify why lung scarring persists in IPF and reverse it in models

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