Abstract
The management of interstitial lung disease (ILD) may benefit from a conceptual shift. Increased understanding of this complex and heterogeneous group of disorders over the past 20 years has highlighted the need for individualised treatment strategies that encompass diagnostic classification and disease behaviour. Biomarker-based approaches to precision medicine hold the greatest promise. Robust, large-scale biomarker-based technologies supporting ILD diagnosis have been developed, and future applications relating to staging, prognosis and assessment of treatment response are emerging. Artificial intelligence may redefine our ability to base prognostic evaluation on both diagnosis and underlying disease processes, sharpening individualised treatment algorithms to a level not previously achieved. Compared with therapeutic areas such as oncology, precision medicine in ILD is still in its infancy. However, the heterogeneous nature of ILD suggests that many relevant molecular, environmental and behavioural targets may serve as useful biomarkers if we are willing to invest in their identification and validation.
Footnotes
This manuscript has recently been accepted for publication in the European Respiratory Journal. It is published here in its accepted form prior to copyediting and typesetting by our production team. After these production processes are complete and the authors have approved the resulting proofs, the article will move to the latest issue of the ERJ online. Please open or download the PDF to view this article.
Conflict of interest: T.M. Maher has, via his institution, received industry-academic funding from AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline R&D and has received consultancy or speaker fees from AstraZeneca, Bayer, Blade Therapeutics, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Galapagos, Galecto, GlaxoSmithKline R&D, IQVIA, Pliant, Respivant, Roche, Theravance and Veracyte. A.M. Nambiar has received institutional research grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, Fibrogen, Galapagos, Nitto Denko and Roche-Genentech, and has received consultancy or speaker fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, Roche-Genentech and Veracyte. A.U. Wells reports consultancy and/or speaker fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, Roche and Veracyte.
This is a PDF-only article. Please click on the PDF link above to read it.
- Received August 2, 2021.
- Accepted January 12, 2022.
- Copyright ©The authors 2022. For reproduction rights and permissions contact permissions{at}ersnet.org
