Tackling pulmonary fibrosis: Boehringer Ingelheim’s new drug + AI approach

In this episode we sit down with Martin Beck, Senior Vice President and Head of the Inflammation Business Unit at Boehringer Ingelheim. Martin grew up just down the road from the company’s headquarters in Germany, joined as a scholarship student more than 20 years ago, and never really left – and you’ll hear why he still loves it.

We spend most of the episode focused on a disease that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: idiopathic and progressive pulmonary fibrosis. These are rare, fatal lung-scarring conditions that kill faster than many cancers, yet patients often shrug off the first symptoms as “just aging.” 

Martin walks us through why half the people on today’s treatments stop taking them, how BI just brought the first new medicine in over a decade to the U.S. market, and why an AI tool that spots microscopic changes on lung scans might finally help doctors diagnose and treat these patients’ years earlier. 

01:24   Meet Martin Beck

04:21   About Boehringer Ingelheim

07:12   Understanding idiopathic & progressive pulmonary fibrosis

10:16   Current treatments & high discontinuation rates

12:25   BI’s long-term investment in PF

16:02   eLung AI tool for earlier diagnosis

22:16   A new oral PDE4B inhibitor

28:13   Key data highlights from the recent ERS congress

30:31   FDA approval & global rollout plans

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To dive deeper into the topic: 

• Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: Refoxy, Boehringer, Insilico, and more on the hunt for curative treatments
• Eight respiratory disease companies advancing innovative therapies in 2025
• BI: Life with pulmonary fibrosis