In recent years, the incidence rate of interstitial lung disease caused by occupational environmental factors, side effects of special drugs, some diseases (especially connective tissue diseases), and unknown causes has become higher and higher. The critical stage of this disease, pulmonary interstitial fibrosis, is characterized by fibroblast proliferation and accumulation of amounts of extracellular matrix, accompanied by inflammatory damage and tissue structural damage. Once the patient progresses to the stage of extensive pulmonary interstitial fibrosis, it will seriously affect the human respiratory function, and eventually lead to respiratory failure and death with the progress and aggravation of the disease. Existing studies have shown that the incidence rate and mortality of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis are increasing year by year. The average survival time after diagnosis is only 2.8 years, and the mortality rate is higher than that of most malignant tumors. Therefore, pulmonary fibrosis has seriously threatened human health and life.
This special issue aims to inspire more critical, exploratory, and innovative research, deeply study the molecular signals of the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis through both laboratory and clinical levels, and screen traditional drugs, synthetic drugs, and biological drugs for the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis, discover and develop new targets for the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis, to provide more modern scientific and theoretical support for the treatment of pulmonary interstitial fibrosis. It is hoped that this special issue can accelerate the research process of drug treatment of pulmonary interstitial fibrosis and provide the basis for the clinical trials of pulmonary fibrosis drugs.
We want to attract researchers who work in medicine in the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis to submit their novel research. Manuscripts submitted to this collection within the section Ethnopharmacology must be based on local and traditional uses of herbal medicines or metabolites isolated from such medicines (see Pillar 1a and 1b). We welcome relevant original research and review articles. Potential topics include, but are not limited to the following:
• New insights into the molecular signaling networks involved in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis.
•Development and design of traditional drugs, synthetic drugs, and biological drugs for the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis.
•Establishment of the targeted delivery system for pulmonary fibrosis drugs.
•Discovery and development of new therapeutic targets against pulmonary fibrosis.
•Clinical studies on the treatment of pulmonary fibrosis drugs.
NOTE:
(1) Clinical Trial articles will be accepted for review only if they are randomized, double-blinded, and placebo controlled. Statistical power analysis or a justification of the sample size is mandatory.
(2) All submissions to the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology using plant extracts or preparations must also adhere to the
Four Pillars of Best Practice in Ethnopharmacology (you can freely download the full version
here). We draw the authors’ attention to the need for detailed chemical characterization of extracts used in any pharmacological or clinical study.
