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‘It is particularly an honor to receive the Aldrighetti Young Investigator Award by an organization that consists of the very people who are most invested in understanding and treating PAH.’

Vineet Agrawal, M.D., Ph.D., didn’t plan a career in medicine. Growing up, he wanted to be an engineer and later studied biomedical engineering at Duke University. At Duke, he worked in a laboratory focused on medical devices. There, he was inspired by an M.D.-Ph.D. student to pursue a medical degree and continue his research work.

Dr. Agrawal, a physician-scientist and instructor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, recently received the Aldrighetti Research Award for Young Investigators. The two-year grant, supported by Janssen Pharmaceuticals through a partnership with the Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA), supports the careers of junior researchers studying pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).

Dr. Agrawal’s path toward pulmonary hypertension (PH) was gradual. It also was personal.

“I have a family member who suffers from PAH,” he says. “I get to see firsthand the effect that PAH has on the life of patients and families.”

While in the medical scientist training program at the University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Agrawal gravitated toward clinical medicine and cardiology. He developed a focus on PH and right ventricular failure based his clinical training.

As a medical resident at Johns Hopkins Medical Center, he noticed many therapies for patients with left- heart failure but fewer treatments for PAH patients with right-heart failure. That unmet need motivated him to focus on developing treatments to improve the lives of people with PAH.

One of the fundamental causes of PAH is the destruction of lung vessels. That destruction ultimately causes high pressures and right heart failure. Despite many treatments to improve the longevity and quality of life for PAH patients, none reverse the changes that occur in the lung vessels.

Dr. Agrawal seeks to understand how to reverse the destruction of lung vessels. He and his colleagues have identified a new protein, TGF beta receptor 3, that might be able to restore normal metabolism in PAH lung vessels.

He hopes his findings will lead to a diseasemodifying therapy for PAH that ultimately could reverse the alteration in lung vessels and possibly lead to a cure.

“It is particularly an honor to receive the Aldrighetti Young Investigator Award by an organization that consists of the very people who are most invested in understanding and treating PAH,” he says. “That the very people who are most affected by PAH believe in my research is great motivation to keep moving forward with finding new treatments.”

‘That the very people who are most affected by PAH believe in my research is great motivation to keep moving forward with finding new treatments.’ – Vineet Agrawal

PHA Welcomes Matt Granato

The Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA) welcomed new leadership as its 30th anniversary year began.

Matt J. Granato joined PHA in January as its third president and CEO. He previously led the Society For Maternal-Fetal Medicine. As the society’s chief executive, he worked with physicians and health care providers who treat pregnant people at risk of complications from pregnancy itself or underlying conditions.

“While I am new to the pulmonary hypertension (PH) community, PHA’s mission to improve and extend lives is a common thread of my career,” he says.

Matt says his tenure at PHA began at a remarkable time: the start of a new year, new milestones for PHA, the launch of COVID-19 vaccines in the United States and new legislation to end surprise medical bills at out-of-network rates.

“The legislative victory seems to signal an auspicious start for my new position, PHA’s 30th anniversary and a strategic, unified approach to defeating the pandemic,” he says.

Under Matt’s leadership, PHA will continue to place patients at the center of its work. “By walking in the patients’ shoes and seeing the world through their eyes, our goals will become more clear and easier to accomplish,” he says.

Among his goals for PHA this year and beyond is a strategic focus on its activities. The organization will rely on its strategic plan as a guiding principle for its initiatives. He aims to ensure each program, project and plan fits within the strategic plan.

“If something doesn’t fall in line, we will need to reassess its purpose,” he says. That mindset will help PHA streamline initiatives to ensure it properly allocates resources where they make the most impact.

Matt also wants to strengthen PHA by further investing in employees. “Maintaining a strong, highly skilled, high-performing team requires continuing professional development and cross-functional collaboration,” he says. PHA plans to invest in opportunities that allow all staff to learn or update new skills or develop new knowledge to help PHA become more effective, efficient and innovative.

Similarly, Matt hopes his longtime experience in health care and association management will be an asset to PHA.

Matt started his association career in 2002 at America’s Blood Centers, a trade association of community blood centers responsible for 50% of the U.S. blood supply and a quarter of the Canadian blood supply. He worked with physicians and administrators to ensure safe, ample blood supplies for emergencies, as well as the daily needs of people with sickle cell disease, new mothers and babies, and people undergoing surgery and blood disorder or cancer treatments.

During that time, he interacted with people whose lives depended on safe blood supplies and discovered their stories. He met bereaved families who were able to spend “extra time” with loved ones because of transfusion treatments.

“The faces of the families were constant reminders of what we did and why we did it,” he says. “Knowing that our work had enabled providers to do their best or had given patients even a few more hours with loved ones was rewarding and a reason to keep trying to do better.”

In everything the organization did, it kept a visual of the patient receiving treatment, similarly to the way PHA has ensured patient-focused support and services since its founding 30 years ago, Matt says.

Before joining America’s Blood Centers, Matt was as a legal analyst at the Organization of American States, a multi-country international body similar to the United Nations, confined to the Americas. He was responsible for assessing human rights abuses in three countries and recommending ways to repair those abuses to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In his personal life, Matt enjoys traveling with his family. Before the pandemic, he, his spouse and their two sons visited many U.S. states, Canada, Europe and South America. Originally, he grew up in Argentina in what he describes as a typical Italian family. He also lived in the U.K., where he attended college, France and Germany.

Vision for the future

Patients first

Matt and his kids enjoy springtime in D.C. in 2019.

‘By walking in the patients’ shoes and seeing the world through their eyes, our goals will become more clear and easier to accomplish.’ – Matt Granato

Lindsay Thurman has had many ups and downs since her 2008 idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH) diagnosis. For the past year, the Louisville, Kentucky, resident been experiencing mostly ups, thanks to a medication change. Over the past year, Lindsay’s lung capacity has increased enough that she took up running during the COVID-19 pandemic.

By Lindsay Thurman

Toward the end of 2019, I noticed that my symptoms were getting worse, so I made a mental list of all of the things I needed to tell my doctor for my upcoming appointment. I didn’t get the chance. During my six-minute walk test, I couldn’t catch my breath.

The nurse practitioner felt my pulse and immediately wanted an electrocardiogram (EKG). By the time I was hooked up, the moment had passed. But the nurse practitioner said that my heart was definitely in some sort of arrhythmia.

My doctor sent me to the hospital for observation. I was worried I would need to begin IV meds, but my doctor decided to swap out one of my oral medications for another in the same pathway. This medication worked wonders for me. I felt like I had so much extra room in my lungs that I practically had to relearn how to breathe.

Over the next couple of months, I was enjoying living symptom-free. Before and since my diagnosis,

I have enjoyed walking long distances for exercise, especially with hills to challenge myself. One day in April I was going up a particularly steep hill on a six-mile walk, and I couldn’t remember being able to breathe this well. I made up my mind that when I got home, I was going to see if I could jog. I had attempted that before my initial diagnosis and failed every time. When I got home, I took a ‘Every time I run it feels deep breath and started a very like a miracle. It wasn’t slow jog. To my shock and amazement, I could breathe just that long ago that I fine. I thought, “Am I breathing passed out in my living normal? Yes, still normal. This room after mild exertion is weird.” I made it around the culdue to my PAH.’ de-sac I live on, which ended up being half a mile. I was shocked! I started calling friends and family to share my excitement. All I could think was that I wanted to do it again. The next day I ran two miles. After a couple of weeks, I ran 3.6 miles. I decided to try hills and ran over three miles at a park with two very large hills. The next day I did two laps and completed 6.1 miles