Nicholas Jendzjowsky, PhD, an investigator at The Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation, along with collaborators across the country, spearheaded the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Workshop on Lung Sensing, a multidisciplinary effort that brought together field experts to examine the lung’s role as a sensory organ and its implications for human disease.
As the lead author of the resulting workshop report, Beyond Breathing: Lung as a Sensory Organ, Dr. Jendzjowsky helped define and synthesize emerging scientific evidence demonstrating that the lungs actively detect environmental, inflammatory, infectious, and physiological signals and communicate these inputs through neural pathways that influence respiratory and immune function.
The workshop highlighted the growing importance of pulmonary sensory biology in understanding conditions such as asthma, chronic inflammatory lung diseases, and respiratory infections. Together, attendees successfully advanced a new conceptual framework for lung research, emphasizing the critical role of neuroimmune signaling and sensory mechanisms in both health and disease. These contributions have helped shape research priorities in this emerging field and foster collaboration across pulmonary, neuroscience, and immunology disciplines.
To read the full report, visit: https://academic.oup.com/ajrcmb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajrcmb/aanag111/8704757