Organizer Description: Lung development is governed by epithelial-mesenchymal interactions. These pathways are recapitulated during injury and repair. This conference will focus on understanding key processes underlying lung development, injury and repair in the context of age, environment and species, with the hope of better understanding disease development and to discover novel therapeutic approaches.

We will highlight critical issues on lung epithelial biology such as stem cells and regenerative medicine, while expanding sessions to encompass themes such as single cell analytical approaches, cell-cell communication, dissect the biological distinctions mesenchymal proliferation as a repair mechanism and fibrosis; present the impact of new tools in single cell analysis on understanding lung development, repair, and disease; and characterize epithelial-mesenchymal interrelationships that maintain lung homeostasis and orchestrate repair and regeneration. The entire program has been designed to achieve a better understanding of the key clinical research issues and how they relate to basic mechanistic investigation.