Biomarkers of Disease

A central issue in Pulmonary Hypertension research and treatment remains the ability to measure disease activity, severity and progression. To enhance this Dr Allan Lawrie is investigating a number of candidate biomarkers, agents that measure more accurately changes in the pulmonary vasculature.

Currently OPG and TRAIL are showing signs of promise, and are being tested against samples from the PH cohort held by the CVBRU. The data from these tests will be submitted for publication in the coming months. In addition to his hypothesis-testing work, Dr Lawrie is also screening a number of other putative biomarkers, including HSP70.

The CVBRU Biorepository of serum and plasma are already a sizeable resource in comparison to other centres, a fact which has attracted significant interest from outside of the unit. Links have already been made with the centres at Cambridge, Imperial and Stanford in an attempt to combine the collective resources of each centre.