Page 86 - CIBERES-2015-eng

Research Groups
Group 28
Programme: Acute Lung Injury / Pulmonary Hypertension Lead Researcher: Pérez Vizcaíno, Francisco
Group members
STAFF MEMBERS: Barreira Barba, Bianca | Martínez Ramas, Andrea | Moreno Gutiérrez, Laura. ASSOCIATED MEMBERS: Cogolludo Torralba, Ángel Luis | Morales Cano, Daniel.
Main lines of research
Pulmonary hypertension is a condition characterized by increased pulmonary vascular resistance with a complex and not well characterized pathophysiol- ogy. Our interest is mainly focused on the mecha- nisms involved in pulmonary vasodilation and inhibi- tion of cell proliferation in order to identify and design new drugs that are potentially useful in the treatment of pulmonary hypertension.
Acute lung injury (ALI ) or its more severe form, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS ) is charac- terized by pulmonary edema and alveolar collapse leading to severe arterial hypoxemia. Although the protective ventilatory support strategies have im- proved the prognosis of patients, the associated
mortality remains unacceptably high. Our interest is to characterizie the pulmonary vascular inflamma- tory response associated with acute lung injury and the identification of therapeutic targets to improve prognosis in these patients.
Our research work is focused in analyzing different signaling pathways involved in these pathologies: 1) Sphingolipids, components of the plasma mem- brane of all eukaryotic cells whose hydrolysis prod- ucts (ceramides and sphingosine) play a key role in various signal transduction pathways. 2) Innate im- munity receptors and danger-associated molecular patterns. 3) microRNAs.
86 I Annual report 2015 I CIBERES