Congratulations to Dr Mark Ormiston, Associate Professor in the Departments of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, Medicine and Surgery, for being one of eleven recipients who were awarded CIHR funding, for his research project titled "Targeting bone morphogenetic protein-9 as an angioproliferative switch in pulmonary arterial hypertension."
Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a fatal disease which involves the disordered and uncontrolled growth of blood vessels in the lung. This overgrowth leads to obstruction of these vessels, and eventual heart failure. Dr. Ormiston’s research will study the effect that a circulating protein called BMP9 has on PAH, which he hypothesizes can serve as a "switch" that either promotes or prevents vascular growth. This information will be used to develop and test candidate drugs that restore the normal growth-limiting response to BMP9 among PAH patients, with the goal of developing new treatments that are grounded in the genetics of the disease.