Lately, we also demonstrated that autophagy augmentation alleviates CS-induced CFTR dysfunction, ceramide accumulation (lipophagy impairment), and resulting COPD-emphysema pathogenesis [22], thus demonstrating that autophagy and CFTR share an interconnected biology crucial for the initiation and progression of chronic lung diseases (Figure 1). The gene discussed is CFTR; the disease is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.