The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health recently awarded a team of researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine a grant to study the mechanisms that cause fibrosis.

The project aims to discover new molecular targets for the diagnosis and treatment of lung and kidney fibrosis-related diseases.

Fibrosis is an essential process of normal wound repair. But excessive fibrosis results in out-of-control tissue accumulation, leading to debilitating symptoms and risking organ failure.

The mechanisms behind aberrant fibrosis appear to be very similar across different organ systems. For this reason, the NIH opened a call for “Collaborative Projects to Accelerate Research in Organ Fibrosis,” based on the belief that work shared among various fibrosis researchers would accelerate medical knowledge.