To date there has been a significantly increased interest in the NLRP3 inflammasome as a new era therapeutic target for regulating NLRP3-driven inflammation including that present in COPD exacerbations (Chernikov et al., 2021; Leszczyńska, Jakubczyk & Górska, 2022; Swanson, Deng & Ting, 2019; Zhang et al., 2021). Here, NLRP3 is linked to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.