Exploring the plasticity of the airway epithelium in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death worldwide and is mainly due to inhaled toxics exposure. Despite the eviction of these irritants, the disease keeps progressing for years in vivo, although the underlying mechanisms remain elusive. In the first part of our work, we focused on the airway epithelium abnormalities in COPD, and we show that the airway epithelium displays a memory of previous insults that probably resides in airway progenitors. Indeed, long-term in vitro cultures recapitulate the COPD epithelium phenotype independently from toxic exposure. The second part of our work demonstrates that COPD epithelial anomalies are at least partly driven by an exaggerated activation of the WNT/β-catenin pathway, involved in cellular proliferation and (de)differentiation. These results provide us a better overview of COPD pathogenesis.(MED - Sciences médicales) -- UCL, 202