Sarah-Eve Lemay

2022 Paroian Family PH Research Scholarship 

Pulmonary hypertension research group, Quebec Heart and Lung Institute, Quebec, Canada

Under the supervision of: Dr. Sébastien Bonnet

About Sarah-Eve Lemay

As she completed a bachelor's degree in pharmacology at Sherbrooke University, Sarah-Eve first joined Quebec's pulmonary hypertension research group for two research internships in the fall of 2019 and summer of 2020. These experiences confirmed her great interest in physiology and medical research and motivated her to pursue graduate studies. She enthusiastically began her master's degree in January 2021 in Clinical and Biomedical Sciences at Laval University under the supervision of Drs. Bonnet and Boucherat. Since the beginning of May 2022, she has been pursuing her doctoral studies in the pulmonary hypertension research group, during which she will deepen her knowledge of the molecular mechanisms that lead to pulmonary vascular remodelling and right ventricular failure in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Her current research work focuses on the implication of hypusine signalling in PAH.

Project:

The role of hypusine signalling in pulmonary arterial hypertension

Patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) have a dysfunction of the cells constituting the wall of the arteries in their lungs. Like cancer cells, PAH cells are characterized by an exaggerated capacity to multiply and resistance to death, resulting in a progressive obstruction of the vessels. Indeed, this obstruction increases the pressure in these vessels, compelling the heart to work harder to pump blood through those arteries, leading to fatal cardiac dysfunction. We identified the hypusine signalling pathway as a potential therapeutic target. In cancer studies, hypusine signalling is known to contribute to the expression of a set of factors, promoting cell proliferation and survival. Thus, we hypothesized that augmented hypusine signalling could promote the obstruction of arteries in PAH. We showed that this pathway is overexpressed in PAH patients and animal models, while its inhibition improved PAH progression in one animal model of the disease. In this project, we propose to investigate further the implication of the hypusine signalling pathway in PAH, which we believe could help us understand the mechanism underlying its development. This study could also benefit other types of pulmonary hypertension, which share common characteristics with PAH.