Three Lakes Foundation partners with leading medical institutions

Three Lakes Foundation (TLF) has announced that it has selected Yale University School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine to join the Three Lakes Consortium for Pulmonary Fibrosis (TLC4PF). Together, they will focus on advancing disease understanding with the goal to accelerate new treatments and curing this devastating lung condition.

Three Lakes Foundation (TLF) is a nonprofit located in Northbrook, Ill., and is dedicated to serving as a catalyst for uniting research, industries, and philanthropy in pulmonary fibrosis.

“The TLC4PF is a multiyear, multimillion dollar initiative,” said Dana Ball, executive director of Three Lakes Foundation. “The Consortium provides a framework for cooperation and coordination among leading pulmonary researchers at medical institutions dedicated to improving care and health outcomes through the development and delivery of new medicines.”

Pulmonary fibrosis (PF) occurs when lung tissue becomes damaged and scarred. Over time, the scarring destroys the lungs, making it harder for oxygen to enter the bloodstream and causes breathing to become difficult. While 40-50,000 people are diagnosed each year with PF, another 40,000 die annually.

The TLC4PF aims to change how the disease is diagnosed and treated. The Consortium comprises three strategic workgroups that are interdependent of each other and each addresses a different challenge in new therapy development:

• The PF Connectome workgroup will utilize artificial intelligence and cutting-edge, technologies to novel precision therapies in PF.
• The PF Translation workgroup will create a unique pipeline of human translational PF models that will expedite drug discovery and validation for PF.
• The PF Early Disease workgroup will focus on studying pre/early PF to understand the underlying biology of disease and progression; identify individuals at risk; and improve long-term outcomes.

At least 10 institutions globally will be collaborating with Three Lakes Foundation and the TLC4PF investigators from the Schools of Medicine at Yale and University of Pittsburgh when the Consortium becomes fully operational. Their participation will be critical to paving the path to discovery, translation and development of clinical trials to study next-generation therapies designed to stop and repair PF.