2015 - IPF and cancer: wounds that do not heal

This seminar is to enhance efforts to improve the diagnostic and therapeutic strategies in IPF. Although the mortality rate of IPF is worse than for the majority of cancers, the recognition of IPF as a potentially fatal disease is not widespread, while the need for sustaining cancer research is accepted at any level of public opinion. Consistent with the cancer-like biology in IPF, the survival of IPF patients is poor, with a 5-year survival rate below 30%. The concept of IPF as a cancer-like disease may be helpful in identifying new pathogenic mechanisms that can be borrowed from cancer biology, potentially leading to different and more effective therapeutic approaches. This seminar gives participants an understanding of recent clinical and scientific concepts in lung fibrogenesis and oncogenesis.