Pathological features of both asthma and COPD coexist in some patients and this is termed asthma-COPD overlap (ACO). ACO is heterogeneous and patients exhibit various combinations of asthma and COPD features, making it difficult to characterise the underlying pathogenic mechanisms. There are no controlled studies that define effective therapies for ACO, which arises from the lack of international consensus on the definition and diagnostic criteria for ACO, as well as scant in vitro and in vivo data. There remain unmet needs for experimental models of ACO that accurately recapitulate the hallmark features of ACO in patients. The development and interrogation of such models will identify underlying disease-causing mechanisms, as well as enabling the identification of novel therapeutic targets and providing a platform for assessing new ACO therapies. Here, we review the current understanding of the clinical features of ACO and highlight the approaches that are best suited for developing representative experimental models of ACO.

一些患者同时存在哮喘和 COPD 的病理特征，这被称为哮喘-COPD 重叠 (ACO)。ACO 具有异质性，患者表现出哮喘和 COPD 特征的各种组合，因此难以描述潜在的致病机制。ACO 的有效治疗方法尚无对照研究，这是由于国际上对 ACO 的定义和诊断标准缺乏共识，以及缺乏体外和体内研究数据。对于能够准确概括患者 ACO 标志性特征的 ACO 实验模型，仍存在未满足的需求。此类模型的开发和研究将确定潜在的致病机制，并能够确定新的治疗靶点并为评估新的 ACO 疗法提供平台。在这里，我们回顾了当前对 ACO 临床特征的理解，并强调了最适合开发 ACO 代表性实验模型的方法。