Copd Research Day - 9Th Edition

There are many reasons why **chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)** deserves to be high on the list of disease targets and research. COPD is still a major **public health problem** because it has a high prevalence and is a leading cause of **morbidity and mortality** worldwide, creating a formidable challenge for the health-care systems. COPD is one of the most frequent causes of unscheduled visits in the offices of general practitioners and specialists and of emergency ward visits and hospital admissions. Furthermore, COPD causes 3.2 millions of deaths worldwide and represents one of the top causes of death among the Italian population.

In addition, COPD care, both directly and indirectly, uses a substantial amount of the resources of the Italian National Health Service, with a significant impact on social expenses. Despite recent trends in reduction of COPD standardized **mortality rates** and some recent successes in **anti-smoking efforts** in a number of Western countries, the overarching demographic impact of ageing in an ever-expanding world population (~8.2 billion in October 2025), joined with other factors such as the high rates of cigarette smoking, will ensure that COPD will remain a challenge for clinicians within the 21st century epidemiological point of view.

Current **personalised treatment** of COPD is still unable to completely modify the natural history of the disease in its different and complex **clinical phenotypes** or to fully satisfy the expectations of the patients. In addition there are molecular links, still largely under-investigated, between COPD, **lung cancer** and **idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF)** - all smoking-related diseases but with different clinical-pathological expressions.

It is particularly relevant that in a large longitudinal study of asymptomatic patients with mild-to-moderate COPD, ~33% of subjects died of lung cancer over ~15 years, suggesting that lung cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in COPD patients. These patients share a common environmental risk factor (smoking) and a genetic predisposition. Moreover, there are no **prognostic biomarkers** to monitor the natural history of the disease in a simple and non-invasive way.

For all these reasons, this meeting will represent an important place of discussion between Italian and international experts on the most recent available evidence on the **molecular pathogenesis of COPD** and novel ongoing **therapeutic approaches**. The Academic Pulmonology team at the University of Parma wishes to stay at the cutting edge of COPD research with the aim of discovering new therapeutic targets and new prognostic biomarkers, which may in the future allow us to better control the disease.