TGFB1 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: However, excessive and persistent TGF-β-induced myofibroblast differentiation and extracellular matrix (ECM) deposition contribute to pathological tissue remodeling that occurs in a broad range of lung diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (Grzela et al., 2016), asthma (Fehrenbach et al., 2017), and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) (King et al., 2011; Hirota and Martin, 2013; Ohgiya et al., 2017).