Translational research in respiratory medicine.

S cientific research and the development of modern powerful techniques [1] are crucial for improving patient care in a society that is increasingly demanding the highest quality health services. Indeed, effective patient care requires the continuous improvement of knowledge on the pathophysiology of the diseases, diagnostic procedures and therapeutic tools available. To this end, development of both clinical and basic research in health sciences is required. However, what is most effective in improving medical knowledge, and hence patient care, is the cross-fertilisation between basic and clinical science. This has been specifically highlighted in recent years with the coining of the term ''translational research'' [2]. Translational research is of great importance in all medical specialties, including respiratory medicine. To review the contribution of translational research in the current understanding of respiratory disorders, a new series entitled ''Cell and animal studies in respiratory medicine'' is launched in this issue of the European Respiratory Journal (ERJ). This series is not conceived as a conventional state-of-the-art analysis. Instead, its aim is to provide basic science and clinically oriented researchers with a perspective of past, current and expected contributions of cell and animal studies to respiratory disorders in the context of translational research. The series will initially address six relevant subjects covering a wide spectrum of respiratory diseases: acute lung injury [3]; asthma; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD); pulmonary hypertension; respiratory infections; and sleep apnoea. As will be clearly shown by the reviews in this series, the relative importance of cell and animal studies in the literature of different respiratory disorders differs among subjects. To illustrate this point, figure 1 shows the ratio between the number of studies classified as ''animal'' and ''human'' in a While, in some subjects, the contribution of animal studies to the literature was remarkable, in others it was scarce. These differences could be explained by the difficulty in designing adequate animal models for each disease [4] and by the different prevalence of each pathology [5]. Interestingly, the relative contribution of animal studies was virtually the same