Our Financial Commitment To PH Research

PHA has been dedicated to supporting research since its early days as an association. To support research, we offer a number of research grants. We launched three new research grants in 2022, increasing our grant commitment by 70%:

• PHA Innovation Research Award. The award supports new areas of PH research that couldn’t have been explored without PHA funding. The grant provides up to $60,000 a year for two years. Csaba Galambos, MD, PhD, of the University of Colorado-Denver was the first recipient of PHA’s Innovation Research Award. Galambos is the director of pediatric pulmonary research at Children’s Hospital Colorado and a lead investigator at the Pediatric Heart Lung Center. His research seeks to understand lung vascular development to identify new strategies for earlier diagnosis, prevention, and potential cures for infants and children with pulmonary disease and PH.

• PHA Pediatric PH Research Award. Paul Critser, MD, PhD, has received the Pulmonary Hypertension Association Pediatric PH Research Award. Critser is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati. His project, “Pulmonary Vascular Development in BPHD Associated PH,” examines new a non-invasive MRI-based imaging tool. The project could lead to earlier diagnosis of bronchopulmonary dysplasia associated-PH.

• PHA Early Career Mentored Scientist Award. PHA began accepting applications in fall 2022 for the Early Career Mentored Scientist Award, which will be granted in 2023. The grant will provide up to $65,000 for one year. The funding will support a PH-related research project that has been favorably reviewed for a National Institutes of Health Early Career Award (K award) but not funded. The award provides bridge funding so the project can generate sufficient preliminary data to make it highly competitive when resubmitted to NIH.

OTHER RESEARCH INITIATIVES

PHA made the final disbursement of the Aldrighetti Research Award for Young Investigators in 2022 to Catherine Simpson, MD. Simpson is interested in clinical and translational research to understand the progression and development of PAH. Understanding cellular changes can lead to the development of new treatments, earlier diagnosis and new ways to monitor disease progression. She is an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins University. A PHA-funded study on PH classifications resulted in the publication of two peer-reviewed articles in 2022 and 10 presentations at scientific and medical conferences. The study, “Redefining Pulmonary Hypertension through Pulmonary Vascular Disease Phenomics,” was supported by PHA and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. The PVDomics study aims to identify biomarkers to improve PH diagnosis and treatment.