Translating Research into Improved Patient Care in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

Despite important advances in its therapeutic management, pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) remains an incurable disease. Although numerous drugs exhibited beneficial effects in preclinical settings, only few have reached clinical trial phases, highlighting the challenges of translating preclinical investigations into clinical trials. Potential reasons for delayed PAH drug development may include the inherent limitations of the currently available animal and in vitro models, potential lack of appropriate standardization of the experimental design, regulatory agencies requirements, competing clinical trials and insufficient funding. Although this is not unique to PAH, there is urgency for reducing the number of false positive signals in preclinical studies and optimizing the development of innovative therapeutic targets through performance of clinical trials based on more robust experimental data. The current review discusses the challenges and opportunities in preclinical research to foster drug development in PAH.