Fig. 1

Graphical abstract. Induced sputum, containing a variety of inflammatory cells, exhibits potential to directly reflect inflammatory processes in the lower airways. Progress in understanding the underlying mechanisms has been made by supplying sputum samples to high-throughput molecular analyses, primarily transcriptomics. To date, these have provided valuable insights to disease mechanisms and have led to differentiation of molecular endotypes (1) that are associated with distinct clinical presentations. However, most high-throughput analyses of sputum samples are prone to substantial bias by variation in cellular composition. Here, we introduce an unbiased deconvolution approach to sputum omics analysis in order to improve the identification of molecular patterns and dysregulation (2). Furthermore, were provide an example that sputum analysis can be extended by whole-genome methylation profiling to broaden the view on molecular mechanisms of pulmonary inflammation. Created with BioRender.com