Airways diseases: insights from the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress 2017

The European Respiratory Society’s Annual Congress 2017, once again, provided an excellent platform to present and discuss hot research topics and challenges in airways diseases. A number of high quality oral and poster sessions discussed novel mechanisms of disease, biomarkers for disease severity, translational and experimental physiology, impact of airway diseases on patients’ health status and novel therapeutic options. We discuss the highlights of some key studies in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which provide novel mechanistic and therapeutic insights.