What did we learn from the North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference?

Abstract

The North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference is an opportunity for the clinicians, multidisciplinary teams and scientists working in the field of cystic fibrosis (CF) to present the latest research and developments. In order to ensure that as many people as possible gain from this impressive event, the American Cystic Fibrosis Foundation make the plenary talks available on their website.1 This article does not attempt to simply reproduce conference talks but to highlight some key messages which emerged and to capture the sense of optimism which was gained by the attendees in Anaheim in October 2007. In the past we may have returned from US conferences with one major headline regarding a single breakthrough dominating our thinking, but in 2007 we left with a real sense of progress on every level in all dimensions of research and care. It is clear that survival for people with CF has improved because of rigorous application of a multidisciplinary approach with attention to detail in all areas of disease management. We have learnt that looking after the lungs without attending to nutrition is a suboptimal approach. It appears that the CF community has adopted the multidisciplinary approach to research and development for ensuring further improvements in outcomes for people with CF. Knowledge of the pathophysiology of lung disease in CF has allowed the CF community to plan interventions at each point of disease development (Figure 1) and at the Anaheim conference there were examples of reports of clinical trials of potential new therapies at every point along the pathophysiological map. I will use this map to describe the advances that were emerging at the meeting. Figure 1 Cystic fibrosis pathopysiology and possible therapies