Current models of pulmonary fibrosis for future drug discovery efforts.

Based upon our current understanding, improving the identification and characterization of clinically relevant molecules or pathways responsible for progressive fibrotic diseases and use of the appropriate preclinical model system to test these will likely be required to improve the drug development pipeline for pulmonary fibrosis. Combination with appropriate preclinical models with ex vivo (precision-cut lung slices) or in vitro models would be beneficial for high-throughput drug discovery or validation of drug effects.