A Potential Diagnostic Biomarker in Pulmonary Hypertension

Right heart failure results from advanced pulmonary hypertension (PH) and has a poor prognosis. There are few available treatments for right heart failure. Pulmonary artery remodeling, including changes in pulmonary artery endothelial cells to endothelial-mesenchymal cells, and aberrant fibroblast and pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell (PASMC) proliferation, are characteristics of the pathophysiological process of PH. As a result, the clinical situation requires novel PH diagnostic and treatment targets. Monocrotaline was used to create an animal model of PH, and lung tissue was removed for transcriptome sequencing. The targets with the highest differences were chosen for transfection after possible targets were identified using bioinformatic techniques and confirmed by qPCR to examine their function in hypoxic PASMCs.

右心衰竭多由肺动脉高压（pulmonary hypertension, PH）进展引发，预后极差，目前可供选择的治疗手段十分有限。肺动脉重构是肺动脉高压病理生理过程的典型特征，具体表现为肺动脉内皮细胞向内皮-间质细胞转化、成纤维细胞异常增殖以及肺动脉平滑肌细胞（pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell, PASMC）过度增殖。有鉴于此，临床亟需新型肺动脉高压诊断与治疗靶点。本研究采用野百合碱（Monocrotaline）构建肺动脉高压动物模型，摘取肺组织开展转录组测序（transcriptome sequencing）；通过生物信息学方法筛选潜在靶点，经qPCR验证后，选取差异表达最为显著的靶点进行转染实验，以探究其在缺氧肺动脉平滑肌细胞中的功能。