Pulmonary hypertension - exploring a potential new treatment

Exploring Kv7 channels as a therapeutic target in pulmonary hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) occurs when abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries carrying blood to the lungs causes damage to the right side of the heart. Symptoms include breathlessness or tiredness. The condition can lead to death from heart failure within a few years and there is currently no cure. The prognosis of many patients with PAH is poor because very few treatments are available. People with PAH have abnormally high blood pressure in the arteries carrying blood to the lungs, which means the right side of the heart has to pump harder against this high pressure, causing damage to the heart. Professor Alison Gurney and colleagues have recently discovered that drugs called Kv7 potassium channel activators can widen the arteries in the lungs, which may reduce artery pressure and improve a person’s symptoms and prognosis. Their initial experiments in rat with PAH suggest that these drugs reduce artery pressure in the lungs but not in arteries in other parts of the body. They have now been awarded a BHF grant to work out exactly how this specificity occurs. They will study whether the drugs are effective because there are more Kv7 channels in PAH lung blood vessels, or whether existing Kv channels simply become more active. This research will teach us more about pulmonary hypertension and may quickly lead to clinical trials of Kv7 activator drugs for the condition.