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Every Breath Counts: Local Efforts Impact Global Asthma Care
Advancing sustainable respiratory care with our next-generation propellant
Respiratory & Immunology
Our ambition is to transform Respiratory & Immunology care for patients, moving beyond symptom control to disease modification, remission and, one day, cure.
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Our commitment
With five decades of experience, we are an established leader in respiratory care and a disruptor in immunology. We are committed to transforming care for some of the most debilitating and chronic respiratory and immune-mediated diseases. Our portfolio of inhaled and biologic medicines, and our pipeline for the future, seek to address the challenges and vast unmet medical needs patients face today. By following the science, we are focused on sustainably addressing complex unsolved problems. Our approach involves targeting the underlying biology, developing effective new drug modalities and combinations and applying a precision medicine approach from the start of discovering medicines, all while driving earlier detection, diagnosis and intervention.
Chronic respiratory & immune-mediated diseases place a significant burden on patients, society and health systems
~500 million
people worldwide have chronic respiratory diseases, which carry a high disease burden1-4
>40 million
people worldwide have the immune-mediated diseases we are targeting5
~$4.3 trillion
the estimated global economic burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by 2050 without investment in effective interventions,6 a leading cause of hospital admissions7 and the world’s third leading cause of death due to chronic disease8
Our focus areas
We are focused on chronic respiratory diseases including asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as well as immune-driven diseases such as lupus. We follow the science to address tough and complex, unsolved problems - targeting the underlying biology and developing effective new drug modalities and combinations with the ultimate ambition of achieving disease modification and clinical remission.
Learn more below about our focus areas:
COPD
We are working to eliminate COPD as the world’s third leading cause of death due to chronic disease, transforming care through our broad portfolio by: Driving timely diagnosis, optimising therapeutic intervention and reducing mortality by addressing cardiopulmonary risk; Advancing innovative medicines including next-generation biologics and orals to slow disease progression and reverse the structural damage caused by COPD.
Other chronic respiratory diseases
We are moving beyond asthma and COPD to address other respiratory diseases with significant unmet medical need, including severe viral lower respiratory tract disease, non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis and interstitial lung disease.
Our R&D approach
We are pushing the boundaries of science by targeting underlying disease drivers with new mechanisms and modalities, offering the broadest range of treatments to transform patient outcomes. Our experience developing medicines that treat tens of millions of patients has provided exceptional insights and a deep understanding of the unsolved issues in the management of respiratory and immune-mediated diseases, informing our research.
Our scientific strategy focuses on two approaches that target common disease drivers of immune dysfunction in and beyond the lung: investing in a portfolio of next-generation therapeutics that suppress inflammation and tissue damage at pathway level, and rebalancing and resetting immune cell function through transformational therapies like T-Cell engagers and cell therapy.
As the science evolves, we are engaging larger patient cohorts and rich datasets, including the largest database of genomic data in the industry, to improve our understanding of novel imaging biomarkers to assess disease progression and remission. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are accelerating the way we identify novel targets to develop next generation therapeutics. Our patient centric approach to clinical trials is incorporating digital health solutions and transformative study endpoints to enable improved outcomes for patients going beyond symptom control to demonstrate disease modification and remission. And we are changing the way we design and perform our clinical trials to make studies smarter, shorter, and more efficient.
Collaboration to transform R&I care
Through collaboration and partnerships, we can accelerate positive change and outcomes for patients. We work with leading research and academic institutions, public health authorities, patient groups and professional organisations across respiratory and immune-mediated diseases.
Speak Up for COPD
The world can no longer afford to overlook COPD.9 That is why we are working with leading respiratory groups and patient allies from around the world to make this disease a public health priority. This cross-industry and multi partnered campaign has one critical goal: to increase the awareness and understanding of COPD among policymakers and healthcare systems. Together we are aiming to unlock policy change barriers that can optimise COPD care.
International Respiratory Coalition
As part of our commitment to transform respiratory care for all patients, we are a founding partner of the International Respiratory Coalition. The Coalition aims to support the transformation of post-pandemic respiratory healthcare and reduce deaths from respiratory disease by one-third globally by 2030. This goal, which aligns with the fast-approaching deadline set for the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals,10 will be delivered through the creation or update of national respiratory strategies which accelerate and scale adoption of good practice care models.
Sustainable respiratory care
We recognise the interconnection between healthy people and a healthy planet. Within Respiratory & Immunology, we are leading the way in reducing the environmental burden of respiratory care by driving improvements in patient outcomes as well as transitioning our pressurised metered-dose inhalers (pMDIs) to use a next generation propellant with reduced climate impact. As part of our Ambition Zero Carbon strategy, we are on track to transition our entire portfolio of pMDIs to an innovative, next-generation propellant with near-zero Global Warming Potential by 2030, with the transition beginning in 2025.
Find out more about our work:
Our people
We are an established leader in Respiratory medicine and a disruptor in Immunology and we invest in and value our people. We are positioned to follow the science in our research, while also solving issues in treatment and management of respiratory and immune-mediated diseases. Our culture is rooted in integrity, inclusiveness, and our dedication to joining and supporting the communities in which we live and work.
The Respiratory & Immunology team is led by:
Join our team
Our Respiratory & Immunology therapy area is driven by innovation and our commitment to make a real-life difference in patient’s lives. That difference starts with you. IDEA Pharma ranked us #1 on their Invention Index and #2 on their Innovation Index and we are recognised as a top employer in 2021/2022 by Forbes, Financial Times and Biospace. We need people like you who share our passion for science and determination to meet patients’ needs around the world.
Visit our careers website and:
Our medicines
We cannot provide detailed information about our prescription medicines on this website, in compliance with regulations. Our medicines are approved in individual countries for specific uses and the information we provide for patients is governed by local regulations. In some cases, healthcare professionals and patients can visit local AstraZeneca websites to find out more about our medicines. Please note that in some countries we are not allowed to provide very much, or sometimes any, information on our prescription medicines so you should seek alternative trustworthy sources. Always ask a healthcare professional for advice about medicines.
Our pipeline for R&I
Our pipeline forms a robust portfolio of investigational therapies in varied stages of clinical development.
Phase III/Reg. refers to assets that are in Phase III or that have been submitted for regulatory approval and may include assets that are now launched in one or more major markets.
Latest news
References
- GBD Chronic Respiratory Disease Collaborators. Prevalence and attributable health burden of chronic respiratory diseases, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017. The Lancet Respir Med. 2020;8(6):585–596.
- GBD 2019 Chronic Respiratory Diseases Collaborators. Global burden of chronic respiratory diseases and risk factors, 1990–2019: an update from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. EClinicalMed. 2023;59:101936.
- Chen X, et al. Global, regional, and national burden of chronic respiratory diseases and associated risk factors, 1990-2019: Results from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019. Frontiers in Med. 2023;10;1066804.
- Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), Chronic respiratory diseases - Level 2 cause. Available at: https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/diseases-injuries-risks/factsheets/2021-chronic-respiratory-diseases-level-2. [Last accessed: May 2025].
- AstraZeneca. Data on File 2025. Chronic Respiratory and Immune Mediated disease figure and burden. REF-249709.
- Chen, S, et al. The global economic burden of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for 204 countries and territories in 2020-50: a health-augmented macroeconomic modelling study. Lancet Glob Health. 2023;11(8):e1183-e1193.
- Njoku CM, et al. Risk factors and associated outcomes of hospital readmission in COPD: A systematic review. Respir Med. 2020;173:105988.
- GBD 2021 Causes of Death Collaborators. Global burden of 288 causes of death and life expectancy decomposition in 204 countries and territories and 811 subnational locations, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. The Lancet. 2024;403(10440):2100-2132.
- World Health Organization (WHO). Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) Fact Sheet. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/chronic-obstructive-pulmonary-disease-(copd). [Last accessed: May 2025].
- United Nations. Sustainable Development Goals. Available at: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/. [Last accessed: May 2025].
Veeva ID: Z4-74042
Date of preparation: May 2025