Chair's Summary: Secreted Mucins in Lung Diseases

Clinically, mucus dysfunction is increasingly recognized as being critically important to the pathogenesis of multiple common lung diseases, including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Max Siebold described changes in human airway epithelial cell gene expression in response to interleukin 13, as recently summarized in Annals of the American Thoracic Society (6). David Thornton reviewed mucin glycoprotein synthesis in the endoplasmic reticulum, processing in the Golgi apparatus, and packaging into secretory granules (pp. David Stoltz described studies of newborn pigs with cystic fibrosis showing defects in mucociliary transport owing to the formation of mucus strands that fail to detach after cholinergic stimulation of submucosal gland secretion (pp.