Pediatric cardiac intensivist Jennifer Schramm discusses her research on CCN proteins in patients with pediatric hypertension. This topic was presented during Blalock-Taussig-Thomas Heart Center Research Day at Johns Hopkins.
Hi, everyone. My name is Doctor Jennifer Sham. I am one of the pediatric cardiac intensivist here at Johns Hopkins Hospital. And today I'm presenting some work that I presented recently from Doctor Alan Everett's lab. And Dr Everett's lab is focused on biomarkers of pulmonary hypertension and other disease states. So we sought to look at CCN proteins in patients with pulmonary hypertension. So CCN proteins are secreted into the cellular matrix and they're important in cell adhesion and chemotaxis and found implicated in many types of neoplasms but have also been thought to be correlating with pulmonary hypertension. So we looked at CCN levels, there are six of them. We looked at them in 40 adults with pulmonary hypertension and 48 adults without pulmonary hypertension and found that CCN 12 and six correlated the best with just the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension. Um CCN two correlated best with survival from of pulmonary hypertension at five years as well as CCN six and then CCN one actually correlated well with functional class and six minute walk distance. And CCN six performed really well against all outcomes including functional class, six minute walk distance, cardiac output and pulmonary vascular resistance. So what does this all mean? So, CCN one is ubiquitous in the tissues. It's important in angiogenesis, chemotaxis proliferation and cell adhesion and over expression is actually thought to be help protective against phccn two is also known as CTGF. It's the more common name for it and it is important in cell adhesion and mito is it a mito attractive secreted by vascular endothelial cells? And we know that it enhances DNA synthesis and is implicated in systemic sclerosis and some neoplasms. And then finally, CCN six, it has a role in mitochondrial electron transport and mitochondrial respiration, which we know is important in pulmonary hypertension. So all of these together, we hope to create a panel or use them individually to be able to predict disease, to predict an outcome and then to understand response to therapy. So, final work in larger cohorts is ongoing right now. And I would really like to thank the Bla La Tassa Thomas Heart Center for supporting all of this work. Doctor Allen Everett's lab and everyone in it for supporting me through this, my PC IC U colleagues in the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine. And then finally, thank you to Johns Hopkins and the patients that inspire this work.
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