TWIST1 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: TWIST1 is involved in obesity- and angiogenesis-associated diseases such as diabetes (Pettersson et al., 2010), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (Nishioka et al., 2015), cancer (Wang et al., 2011), pulmonary fibrosis (Mammoto et al., 2016), and atherosclerosis (Mahmoud et al., 2016, 2017).