Cross-disease approaches to treating the onset, exacerbation and progression of chronic lung diseases

Dr Renata Jurkowska, Reader and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, is a molecular biologist with general interests in epigenetics, stem cells, and lung biology. She obtained her M.Sc. degree in Biotechnology at Warsaw University (Poland), completed her PhD, and two postdocs in Germany before joining BioMed X Innovation Center (Germany), where she worked at the interface between academia and industry, leading a biomedical preclinical project in the field of respiratory medicine. She is currently a Reader at the School of Biosciences at Cardiff University (UK) and, since 2024, also a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. Her research focuses on understanding epigenetic mechanisms driving the development of lung diseases. Her group employs sequencing-based approaches in combination with cutting-edge epigenetic editing tools and organoid models to advance the biological understanding of lung cell regeneration and accelerate the discovery of epigenetic therapeutics and biomarkers for respiratory diseases. Her research has been funded by the Academy of Medical Sciences Springboard Award, BBSRC, UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, and Wellcome Discovery Award.

Aurélie Crabbé is an associate professor in microbiology at the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Microbiology, Ghent University, Belgium. Her work centres on the role of the lung microbiome role in chronic respiratory diseases - particularly cystic fibrosis, COPD, and bronchiectasis - combining patient-driven insights with in vitro data from physiologically relevant 3D models. Hereby, she aims to harness the lung microbiome to combat infection and dampen excessive host inflammation, paving the way for biotherapeutics targeting chronic respiratory conditions.