BASIC SCIENCE RESEARCH

Complementing patient care and clinical research, the Scottish Pulmonary Vascular Unit has also adopted basic science since 1990 under the direction of Professor Andrew Peacock in an attempt to understand the profound changes of pulmonary arteries in patients with pulmonary hypertension.

Pulmonary hypertension is a rare disorder but is prevalent in patients with chronic hypoxic lung disease. Exposure to persistent hypoxia results in sustained pulmonary hypertension resulting from a combination of hypoxic vasoconstriction and morphological alterations of the pulmonary vascular bed (termed: pulmonary vascular remodelling).

Our unit utilises molecular biological techniques on various cell types cultured from sections of pulmonary arteries to understand changes in vessel wall make-up on a cellular level with the ultimate goal of finding a treatment to target pulmonary hypertension.

The research within the unit is known worldwide within the pulmonary hypertension community and has collaborations with laboratories from the UK and Europe. We also train scientists to gain BSc, MD and PhD higher degrees.

This work is funded by medical charities i.e. British Lung Foundation, Chest,Heart and Stroke Scotland and British Heart Foundation, all of whom actively seek solutions to this medical condition.

Staff within the SPVU Laboratory

• Section Leader - Dr David Welsh
• PhD Fellow - Dr Colin Church