26 March, 2025
The European Respiratory Society (ERS) thanks all those who took part in the 23rd ERS Lung Science Conference in Estoril, Portugal, and online.
This year’s event focused on ‘Repairing the lung: from single cells and tissue organisation to regenerative therapy’ and was fully booked onsite, with sessions well attended and the event proving a success despite the challenging weather in Estoril.
A number of attendees also joined the event online and exclusively for the Sunday session, which focused on regenerative therapies.
The Society would like to thank those involved in producing an engaging and extensive programme – in particular programme coordinators Prof. Silke Meiners, Prof. Janette Burgess, Dr Sara Cuevas Ocaña, Dr Carla Kim and Dr Emma Rawlins.
The 23rd LSC also saw the involvement of patient representatives in the event’s Sunday session for the first time, placing patient perspectives at the centre of the discussion between basic and translational scientists.
Presenters recognised with prestigious awards
For 2025, the Young Investigators Session – William MacNee Award went to Thalles de Freitas Castro (France) for his presentation of Effects of second hand cigarette smoke exposure on alveolarization in C57BL/6J mice pups.
The winner of the Oral Presentations – Geoffrey Laurent Award was Antonella Dost (Netherlands) with Human organoids reveal inflammation-mediated effects on alveolar epithelial regeneration.
Distinguished posters for 2025:
- The airway epithelium in patients with asthma is in a continuous state of repair – Tessa Gillett (Netherlands)
- Optimisation of single-nucleus RNA sequencing for superior characterization of the airway wall cellular landscape in pulmonary disease – Sjors Maassen (Netherlands)
- Developing a novel method for visualizing cell-directed extracellular matrix remodelling for investigating lung regeneration mechanisms – Isidora Kraguljac (Netherlands)
- Peptidyl-arginine deiminases as bactericidal and anti-biofilm agents against Pseudomonas aeruginosa – Rory Baird (Ireland)
- In Vitro Microfluidic Breathomics: epithelial volatiles and whole patient breath in COPD – Brady Rae (Netherlands)
- Sex hormones modulate the onset of pulmonary fibrosis in type 2 alveolar epithelial cells – Anja Schweikert (Ireland)
- Anti-IL5Rα therapy restores nasal epithelial cell barrier function in severe eosinophilic asthma – Katie Raby (United Kingdom)
- An un-biased preliminary investigation into the potential harms of heated-tobacco-products – Katherine Landwehr (Australia)
- Establishing a human lung model of radiation-induced senescence using precision-cut lung slices – Hui Xin Loh (United Kingdom)
The theme of the ERS Lung Science Conference 2026 will be ‘Multiscale multiomics to dissect lung diseases from the bench to the bedside’, with event dates to be confirmed in due course.
We look forward to seeing so many talented early career scientists and senior researchers once more at next year’s event.