Investigating the cause of a deadly lung condition

Pulmonary hypertension is a rare, progressive and incurable condition – people with it have a significantly reduced quality of life and can develop heart failure.

New treatments for pulmonary hypertension are vital so we’re funding research in Scotland looking at its causes.

People with pulmonary hypertension suffer from a narrowing of the arteries in the lungs that causes high blood pressure. Their heart then has to work much harder to pump against the high blood pressure in the lungs, which can eventually cause heart failure.

How your donations help

Thanks to generous donations of time and money from the UK public, we’re funding a £180,000 project that will shed new light on how pulmonary hypertension develops. The team, a collaboration between the University of Strathclyde and the University of Glasgow, is focused on one particular protein – sphingosine kinase 1 (SPK1).

SPK1 appears to make the symptoms of pulmonary hypertension worse by thickening the walls of blood vessels, constricting blood flow and therefore further increasing the blood pressure in the lungs. The protein seems to do this by promoting the growth of new cells in the vessel wall but it’s not yet clear exactly how it works.

Professors Nigel and Susan Pyne from Strathclyde and Dr Simon Kennedy from Glasgow are using mice to improve our understanding of SPK1’s role in pulmonary hypertension. It’s hoped this information will help scientists to develop new medical therapies to treat this condition in the future.