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Working to Improve Life with COPD 

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Beyond symptoms: Our immunoscience targets COPD's inflammatory drivers​ ​

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a life-threatening respiratory disease and arguably one of the greatest health challenges we face globally in terms of resources, costs and lives lost.1-3

Beyond the debilitating physical toll, stigma often leads to feelings of blame and shame, and further isolates those who need it most from the care and support they deserve.4 Add to this a startling lack of research advances for decades, and COPD has become the fourth leading cause of death globally.1

Our science is aiming to turn this reality on its head.

Understanding COPD Differently

COPD occurs when lungs become damaged and make it hard to breathe. For a long time, scientists thought that the main driver of COPD was the blockage of airways, and that’s partly true. But it isn’t the whole story. Recent discovery has helped us understand why they are becoming blocked – and that there are actually processes happening in the immune system that are contributing. This is where inflammation comes in.5  

Inflammation is one of the fundamental ways that our immune system protects us against harm. It is a protective response to injury or invasion by a foreign substance, and it helps our body repair itself and eradicate the invader.6

In COPD, when lungs have been damaged, the reactive inflammatory response starts, and lungs become inflamed. And then that inflammation doesn’t stop.5

Our deep understanding of the immune system helped us discover that the same inflammatory pathways that are involved in many autoimmune diseases are also being activated in COPD.7,8 So our immune cells may be reacting to environmental triggers such as cigarette smoke or air pollutants, or even trying to repair damage caused by these triggers, but this reaction is causing more damage over time.5 The inflammation makes it harder to breathe, and causes even greater harm, even after the environmental trigger is no longer present.9 Lung function deteriorates, and eventually COPD becomes life-threatening.10

We're focused on transforming treatment for all patients, and helping them take better control of their lives.

How We’re Advancing Science to Improve Lives

COPD symptoms are varied and often severe. They range from wheezing and persistent coughing with mucus to shortness of breath that can make it difficult just to walk up the stairs or even to sleep.11,12 To make matters worse, they often increase the chance that a person will develop other serious conditions at the same time.13 

For this reason, treatment traditionally focused on how to make it easier to breathe by increasing oxygen flow to the lungs. We focused on the symptoms, and how to counteract them, rather than thinking about the root causes – how to stop the inflammation that helps drive chronic exacerbations.

That approach has shifted significantly in recent years, and we’ve been at the forefront of rethinking respiratory diseases like COPD. But we’ve more work to do.

COPD is what is called a “heterogenous” disease: there is no one cause or trigger, and it looks different in different people. Likewise, our immune system is a complex, convoluted and highly sophisticated network of intersecting and interdependent processes, and the inflammatory response is no exception. What drives this response is not the same in everyone, so we need to explore all of the mechanisms to find different solutions that can work for more people.

Our research uses immunoscience – a unique approach that drives us to study diseases based on their biological cause, rather than their manifestation – to understand the many parts of different inflammatory mechanisms involved in COPD and how we can try to stop them. We’re focused on transforming treatment for all patients, and helping them take better control of their lives.

That means making sure a life with COPD looks closer to a life without COPD: to help every person breathe easier, live fuller, and find the freedom to chase their dreams.

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References

  1. Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. Naghavi, Mohsen et al. The Lancet, Volume 403, Issue 10440, 2100 – 2132.
  2. Association, American Lung. COPD Trends Brief - Burden, American Lung Association, www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/copd-trends-brief/copd-burden.  Accessed September 2025
  3. Chen, Simiao, et al. "The global economic burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for 204 countries and territories in 2020–50: a health-augmented macroeconomic modelling study." The Lancet Global Health 11.8 (2023): e1183-e1193.
  4. Mathioudakis, Alexander G., Sachin Ananth, and Jørgen Vestbo. "Stigma: an unmet public health priority in COPD." The Lancet Respiratory Medicine 9.9 (2021): 955-956.
  5. Oh JY, Sin DD. Lung inflammation in COPD: why does it matter? F1000Research. 2012;4:23.
  6. InformedHealth.org [Internet]. Cologne, Germany: Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG); 2006-. In brief: What is an inflammation? [Updated 2025 Apr 11]. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279298/
  7. Yun JH, Lamb A, Chase R, et al; COPDGene and ECLIPSE Investigators. Blood eosinophil count thresholds and exacerbations in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2018;141(6):2037-2047.e10. doi:10.1016/j.jaci.2018.04.010
  8. Bélanger M, Couillard S, Courteau J, et al. Eosinophil counts in first COPD hospitalizations: a comparison of health service utilization. Int J Chron Obstruct Pulmon Dis. 2018;13:3045-3054.
  9. Oelsner, Elizabeth C., et al. "Lung function decline in former smokers and low-intensity current smokers: a secondary data analysis of the NHLBI Pooled Cohorts Study." The Lancet Respiratory Medicine 8.1 (2020): 34-44.
  10. Garcia-Aymerich, Judith, et al. "Lung function impairment, COPD hospitalisations and subsequent mortality." Thorax 66.7 (2011): 585-590.
  11. Seemungal, Terence AR, et al. "Effect of exacerbation on quality of life in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease." American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 157.5 (1998): 1418-1422.
  12. Miravitlles, Marc, and Anna Ribera. "Understanding the impact of symptoms on the burden of COPD." Respiratory Research 18.1 (2017): 1-11.
  13. Morgan, Ann D., Rosita Zakeri, and Jennifer K. Quint. "Defining the relationship between COPD and CVD: what are the implications for clinical practice?." Therapeutic Advances in Respiratory Disease 12 (2018): 1753465817750524.

MAT-GLB-2505754 I October 2025