EGFR and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: EGFR expression has been reported to be weak or absent in healthy individuals but is significantly increased in the airway epithelium of not only asthmatics (Puddicombe et al., 2000; Takeyama et al., 2001a; Takeyama et al., 2001b; Polosa et al., 2002), but also in patients with COPD (de Boer et al., 2006) and cystic fibrosis patients (CF) (Burgel et al., 2007).