Chronic pulmonary diseases frequently develop in the context of the aging lung and in response to a permanent interaction of the bronchial and alveolar epithelium with inhaled agents, allergens and noxes. In addition, as seen from an evolutionary and species-overspanning point of view, the lung's architecture is remarkably flexible in dependency of the habitat that the species is living in, suggesting that the underlying signalling pathways interact in a tightly regulated fashion, pending on the requirements defined by the niche.

The 2017 GRC Conference on Lung Development, Injury and Repair is dedicated to revisit our understanding of 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.