To develop therapies that prevent the development of PF, it is essential to study the earliest aspects of disease pathogenesis — before patients develop symptoms and prior to significant organ dysfunction. It is important to understand — at the molecular level — what triggers disease initiation and how disease develops. 

Using lung biopsy samples from patients with a family history of ILD, genomic technologies will be used to understand the drivers of early disease and the factors that contribute to disease progression. 

Jonathan Kropski, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center is the principal investigator of the study. Nicholas Banovich, PhD, Associate Professor at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) is a co-investigator.