@ling @gigiv @brody89 @sandpiper49 and all who have an interest in this subject (me too)
Let's talk about emerging therapies and research, @ling you said "We bronchiectasis patients should push this idea for reversing bronchiectasis. " When we are immersed in living with a condition or disease, and reading about it every day on Mayo Connect and other forums, it seems hard to believe, but Bronchiectasis is still considered rare compared to many other diseases, and NTM is very rare. Yet there is a lot of research ongoing on these therapies for bronchiectasis and a host of other diseases. You can use Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) to read about it.

Why not more? High-tech, targeted therapies cost BILLIONS of dollars to develop, and each one is disease specific, sometimes even disease-variant or individual patient specific. What does that mean for us? Diseases that affect more people or that are rapidly fatal will naturally be at the top of the list. So bronchiectasis (about 1/2 to 1 million) will not get the same attention as COPD (15M) or Asthma (28M), and NTM (about 100,000) is less researched than MRSA (2.5 million).

But the good news is that as each targeted therapy is perfected, other scientists can use that knowledge to streamline their research and development of treatments for other conditions.

What can we do? We can encourage our elected officials to fully fund scientific and medical research. If we have the financial ability, we can contribute to specific research efforts by qualified organizations.