For example, taurine-up-regulated gene 1 (TUG1) and metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcript 1 (Malat1) are upregulated in lung tissues of COPD patients, and their silencing inhibits the expression of fibronectin and α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and improves the viability of human fetal lung fibroblast 1 (HFL1) cells following TGF-β pretreatment (Tang et al., 2016; Hu et al., 2020). Here, TGFB1 is linked to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.