Inhibition of the IRE1α pathway has been shown to improve TGFβ1-induced collagen and fibronectin production by fibroblasts from patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), cytokine-induced mucus production in human airway epithelial cells (AECs), and mucus production in the distal murine airway epithelia in murine models of fibrosis (Ghavami et al., 2018; Chen et al., 2019). The gene discussed is ERN1; the disease is idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.