Sasha Prisco
University of Minnesota, MN·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
In pulmonary arterial hypertension, a rare and progressive disease, the blood vessels in the lungs narrow. The right side of the heart must then pump against rising pressure until it fails.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Physiology
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
pulmonary arterial hypertension
right ventricular failure
right ventricle
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2028
What they work on
- Determine whether Lactobacillus supplementation reduces harmful microtubule remodeling and improves right ventricular function in monocrotaline and Sugen-hypoxia rodent models of pulmonary arterial hypertension.
- Measure right ventricle performance after Lactobacillus treatment using echocardiography, invasive hemodynamics (direct pressure measurements), treadmill exercise testing, and histology.
- Investigate whether Lactobacillus reverses gut dysbiosis and lowers systemic inflammation, using metagenomic sequencing of gut microbes, SomaScan proteomics, and single-cell RNA sequencing.
- Test whether Lactobacillus blocks immune cell activation that drives glycoprotein 130-mediated loss of junctophilin-2, a protein that maintains t-tubules in heart muscle cells.
More about the research
How well the right ventricle, the heart chamber that pumps blood to the lungs, keeps working is the strongest predictor of survival. Yet no current drug directly treats the failing right ventricle. This project asks whether changing the bacteria in the gut could calm the inflammation that harms this heart chamber.
Why it matters
People with pulmonary arterial hypertension currently have no drugs that directly support the failing right ventricle. If Lactobacillus supplementation proves effective in rodents, reshaping the gut microbiome could become a new treatment approach for this rare and often fatal disease. Mapping the gut–inflammation–heart pathway could also reveal additional drug targets.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Soban Umar
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine how the Snai1–LOXL2–CTGF axis drives endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition, where vessel-lining cells become scar-forming cells, in right ventricles of PH rats and in human coronary artery endothelial cells.
Jason Hong
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Define how asporin blocks both TGF-β and EGFR signaling and what controls its protein levels in PAH pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells, using receptor-binding, drug-synergy, protein-stability and ubiquitination assays.
Peter Leary
University of Washington, WA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test in a Phase 2, single-center, randomized placebo-controlled trial whether 24 weeks of valsartan, an angiotensin receptor blocker, is safe and improves six-minute walk distance in adults with pulmonary arterial hypertension.
The school
University of Minnesota: 88 labs on PI Pages, $1.4B a year on research, 722 research doctorates a year.
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