Therefore, in the present study we tested whether pharmacological inhibition of IRE1α decreases cytokine production in a pre-clinical inflammatory model for CF consisting of mucosal exposure of well-differentiated primary cultures of F508del homozygous human bronchial epithelia (HBE) to supernatant of mucopurulent material (SMM) harvested from excised human CF lungs [22,39]. Here, ERN1 is linked to cystic fibrosis.