Description
The Division of Lung Diseases of the National Heart Lung Blood Institute (NHLBI), with the Office of Rare Diseases Research (ORDR), held a workshop on March 8-9, 2010 to identify priority areas and strategic goals to enhance and accelerate research that will result in improved understanding of the lung vasculature, translational research needs, and ultimately the care of patients with pulmonary vascular diseases. Multi-disciplinary experts with diverse experience in laboratory, translational and clinical studies identified seven priority areas and discussed limitations in our current knowledge, technologies and approaches. The focus for future research efforts include: a) better characterizing vascular genotype-phenotype relationships and incorporating systems approaches when appropriate; b) advancing our understanding of pulmonary vascular metabolic regulatory signaling in health and disease; c) expanding our knowledge of the biologic relationships between the lung circulation and circulating elements, systemic vascular function, and right heart function and disease; d) improving translational research for identifying disease-modifying therapies for the pulmonary hypertensive diseases; e) establishing an appropriate and effective platform for advancing translational findings into clinical studies testing, and f) developing the specific technologies and tools that will be enabling for these goals, such as question-guided imaging techniques and lung vascular investigator training programs. Recommendations from this Workshop will be utilized within the Lung Vascular Biology and Disease Extramural Research Program for planning and strategic implementation purposes.