Female researchers in lab

The Margaret Turner-Warwick Centre for Fibrosing Lung Disease (MTW-CFLD) was established in 2021 and is the UK's only centre for fibrosing lung diseases.  The goal of the MTW Centre is to increase fundamental knowledge of fibrosis biology to develop, evaluate and implement novel, safe, and effective treatments that will ultimately lead to a cure for pulmonary fibrosis. 

The MTW Centre consists of world leading academic clinicians and scientists in the field of pulmonary fibrosis working at the translational interface between fundamental scientific discovery and clinical implementation. With a sustained track record in attracting high levels of research funding and extensive experience leading the design of research programmes using a systematic and collaborative approach drawing together a full range of cross-cutting scientific disciplines the MTW Centre aims to reduce death and suffering as a result of pulmonary fibrosis.

The MTW Centre represents a collaboration between the RB&H Hospital and Imperial College to fill the key national leadership gap in the innovation pathway for fibrotic lung disease and represents a major new strategic priority at the National Heart and Lung Institute. The MTW Centre will increase the fundamental knowledge of the pathobiology pulmonary fibrosis and provide a national focus for the development and co-ordination required to translate this new knowledge into improved treatments for patients with pulmonary fibrosis and driving them into routine clinical care.  

The MTW Centre builds on an established partnership between academic staff within NHLI and the many interstitial lung disease (ILD) clinicians working in the Imperial Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC), particularly Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust (St Mary’s and Hammersmith Hospital), RB and H NHS Foundation Trust, and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trust.  

Our vision and themes

Our vision is to find a cure for pulmonary fibrosis through improved understanding of disease biology.

The MTW Centre addresses three key themes that need to be established to cure pulmonary fibrosis.

  1. Identify people at risk of developing progressive pulmonary fibrosis before extensive fibrosis has occurred. 
  2. Develop new, safe and tolerable therapies that can reverse early lung injury or prevent the development of progressive disease.
  3. Generate biomarkers that can predict risk of disease progression, and monitor response to therapy in real-time before the development of irreversible progressive fibrosis.