This special issue of CHEST is a compilation of articles provided by way of the speakers at a latter meeting organized by the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute.

This special issue of CHEST is a compilation of articles provided by way of the speakers at a latter meeting organized by the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute. The meeting, which focused in succession "Remodeling and Repair in Respiratory Diseases," was held at the historic La Fonda [i]cabaret[/i] in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in succession October 14-17, 2001. Despite belong tos about travel resulting from the terrorist acts onward September 11, 2001, the meeting was attended according to over 150 scientists from 12 countries.

Respiratory diseases account for individual death in four in the United States. Unlike many other high-impact diseases, of that kind as heart disease and cancer, the incidence of many respiratory diseases, similar as asthma and COPD, is increasing. Environmental factors are speculation to be involved in many of these diseases, still except for the obvious impact of cigarette smoking, the exact factors and their mechanisms of action are still largely unknown. Although a progress has been made in treating these disorders, therapy is largely still supportive. Little is known about the processe responsible for the remodeling involved in the physiologic changes, nor do we know frequently about mechanisms that could be stimulated to force repair of the damage. This meeting focused onward the structural changes and their functional dependence of cause and effects as they occur in ARDS, asthma, pulmonary hypertension, fibrosis, neonatal diseases, and COPD Each session of the symposium featured invited presentations by means of experts in their respective fields, full quantityed by poster presentations contributed in answer to a call for abstracts.

This meeting was the fourth in a series sponsored according to Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute. The topic of the 2002 meeting was "Molecular Approaches to the Early Diagnosis and Treatment of Respiratory Diseases," held at the same location forward October 13-16, 2002. More information is available at the symposium website: www lovelace-symposium.org.

* From the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute Annual Symposium forward Remodeling and Repair in Respiratory Diseases. Correspondence to: JeanClare Seagrave, Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, 2425 Ridgecrest SE Albuquerque, NM 87108; e-mail; jseagrav@lrri.org

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