Material from the human lung is particularly valuable for translational research: it is essential for testing and understanding the mechanisms of the highly diverse pulmonary diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), pulmonary hypertension, pulmonary fibrosis or others.

Due to its exceptional importance, a separate platform for pulmonary pathology was established within the BREATH research network in 2014. This platform is based at Hannover Medical School (MHH), one of the largest lung transplant centers in the world, and provides clinicians and researchers in the German Center for Lung Research (DZL) with a sophisticated logistics system (including 24h on-call service and processing of fresh material / 7 days a week), the latest histopathological and molecular pathological diagnostics and valuable lung material of outstanding quality.