The University of Cambridge and the laboratories of Professor Nick Morrell, which are based there, play a vital role in the global quest to find a cure for PAH.
The team at The University of Cambridge is focussed on the genetic form of the disease. To date The Dinosaur Trust have funded two PHDs and a research fellow position.
When Archie was very sick, we were desperately looking for a cure or any research that suggested that there was something that could positively affect Archie’s prognosis.
We looked everywhere, but found little.
Due to pulmonary arterial hypertension being such a rare disease, it was fortuitous that Archie’s grandfather heard Nick Morell discussing stem cell research into the condition, in an interview for the BBC.
We had already begun to look into stem biology to try and understand pulmonary arterial hypertension. Nick Morell seemed like the perfect person to approach to find out more.
We contacted Nick and explained that we wanted to try to find a cure for Archie’s condition. We asked if we could support his team by funding research into a potential cure for PAH.
Nick explained that his team was already doing a lot of work in this field and that there were some key bits of research that they didn’t have the funding to carry out. One of those key bits of research related to the BMPR2 project.
With Nick Morell being one of the worlds leading medical researchers and The University of Cambridge being a British institution, we felt, it was the right project for us to raise money for and support.
We then went on to fund a second BMPR2 project with Nick Morell and his Team at The University of Cambridge. This work was carried out by Dr Amer Rana and Emily and has led to making new discoveries and further understanding of the BMPR2 gene mutation. This research will speed up the process of them finding a cure or better treatments for PAH.
Whilst supporting these projects with Nick Morell, it became apparent that the BMPR2 research would benefit from funding a Bioinformatician to gather and collate data sets from global cohorts of patients. This specialist role brought better understanding of the mechanisms and groups and subgroups within pulmonary hypertension. Such insight was, and continues to be, vital in understanding the genetic side of pulmonary hypertension.