Pathology's new role: defining disease process and protective responses.

Since inception, pathology has served as the indispensable link between basic science and clinical disease, encompassing the defining of disease processes and mechanisms through observation of structural alterations, as well as hypothesis-driven experimentation. The careful study of pathology has delivered an understanding of disease sufficient to guide effective treatment, and recognize ineffective treatment, so consequential to man’s enhanced life expectancy in the past century. This paradigm has been particularly successful in providing insights for treatment of acute diseases; however, in the setting of chronic disease, where the relationship between basic pathology (typically end-stage) and pathophysiology is often misinterpreted, progress towards effective therapy has been slow, at best [1].