Maryam Sharifi-Sanjani, Ph.D.

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a progressive condition that causes damage to the pulmonary arteries. During PH, narrowing of the pulmonary arteries puts blood pressure overload on the right ventricle, requiring it to work harder. When the right ventricle can no longer adapt to this stress, cardiac muscle cells, called cardiomyocytes, express undesirable proteins, and consequently, the right ventricle fails. We have generated novel mice that are missing a unique protein that we discovered. We will investigate whether we can help stressed right ventricle cardiomyocytes limit expression of undesired proteins by giving them our specific protein. We hope that in the future, administration of a medicine that targets, or works like, this unique protein would help a PH patient’s heart function better.