Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): Molecular Mechanisms and Treatment

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is supervised by Dr. Ramcés Falfán-Valencia and assisted by our Topical Advisory Panel members, Dr. Gloria Pérez-Rubio and Dr. Ingrid Fricke-Galindo.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to our Special Issue of the International Journal of Molecular Sciences (IJMS), titled “Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD): Molecular Mechanisms and Treatment”. This issue will cover a selection of recent research topics and current review articles, reporting the latest updates on COPD with a particular emphasis on physiopathological mechanisms and novel therapy approaches.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. COPD is a heterogeneous condition; the onset and trajectory are influenced by tobacco smoking, individual genetics, and the environmental exposures individuals accumulate over their life course. There is an urgent need to identify COPD patients at high risk for poor outcomes and understand mechanistically why some individuals are at high risk.

This issue can be addressed by precision medicine approaches, which focus on understanding an individual’s disease risk and tailoring management based on pathobiology, environmental exposures, and biomarkers. Genetics, omics, and network analytic techniques have started to dissect COPD heterogeneity and identify patients with specific pathobiology. Phenotyping individuals based on similar clinical or molecular characteristics can guide appropriate therapeutic management. Treatable traits, characteristics for which evidence supports a treatment response, are being increasingly incorporated into COPD clinical guidelines. However, the COPD phenotyping literature is changing. Innovations in lung imaging, physiologic metrics, omics, and biomarker technologies contribute to a better understanding of COPD heterogeneity.

Dr. Ramcés Falfán-Valencia
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• emphysema
• chronic bronchitis
• genetic susceptibility
• pharmacogenomics
• exacerbation
• biomarkers
• inflammasome
• genomics
• nicotine addiction and COPD
• biomass-burning smoke