Papworth Hospital is a nationally designated centre for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with severe pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and is the only centre designated to undertake pulmonary endarterectomy for chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH). The BRC funding allocated to the Pulmonary Vascular Diseases Unit (PVDU) at Papworth supports two research nurses who are central to the success of our translational programme. Significant added value has come from the reallocation of internal funds to support two clinical research fellows within the Unit.
As evidence of successful training of fellows provided by the BRC, one recent fellow is now an MRC clinical training fellow and another has been awarded a Clinical Lecturer position within the Translational Medicine and Therapeutics programme to undertake translational research in pulmonary hypertension.
The research outputs from the PVDU have doubled since the introduction of BRC funding. BRC support has enabled closer collaborative links between the basic science laboratories within CUH and the PVDU at Papworth, leading to high impact publications and the identification of new biomarkers. Research highlights over the past year have been the publication of a Phase II proof-of-concept and safety study supporting the use of an entirely novel class of therapy in this condition, tyrosine kinase inhibition, and the identification of levels of inflammatory cytokines as strong predictors of survival in PAH9.
