Medical researchers at Alberta University discover potential treatment for pulmonary hypertension

Researchers in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta, Canada, are one step closer to a treatment for a deadly disease, pulmonary arterial hypertension, which is high blood pressure in the lungs, currently has only a few treatment options but most cases lead to premature death.

It is caused by a cancer-like excessive growth of cells in the wall of the lung blood vessels. It causes the lumen, the path where blood travels, to constrict putting pressure on the right ventricle of the heart which eventually leads to heart failure.

Evangelos Michelakis, his graduate student Gopinath Sutendra and a group of collaborators have found that this excessive cell growth can be reversed by targeting the mitochondria of the cell, which control metabolism of the cell and initiate cell death.