New therapeutic targets in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Aiming to rein in runaway wound-healing responses.

ABSTRACT: Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a devastating disease, with a median survival as short as 3 years from the time of diagnosis and no pharmacological therapies yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. To address the great unmet need for effective IPF therapy, a number of new drugs have recently been, or are now being, evaluated in clinical trials. The rationales for most of these therapeutic candidates are based on the current paradigm of IPF pathogenesis, in which recurrent injury to the alveolar epithelium is believed to drive aberrant wound healing responses, resulting in fibrosis rather than repair. Here we discuss drugs in recently completed or currently ongoing phase II and III IPF clinical trials in the context of their putative mechanisms of action and the aberra

SUBMITTER: Ahluwalia N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4299574 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature