ERS Romain Pauwels Research Award 2016

Presented to: Dr Soni Savai Pullamsetti

Dr Soni Savai Pullamsetti is Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, Department IV - Lung Development and Remodelling, Bad Nauheim, Germany. Dr Pullamsetti is also Associate Professor at Justus-Liebig University, Giessen, Germany. She serves as Co-Area Leader in the "Excellence Cluster for Cardio Pulmonary System (ECCPS II)", Program Committee Member of the American Thoracic Society (ATS), and Project Leader in German Lung Centre (DZL), and collaborative research centre on lung diseases (UGMLC).

Dr Pullamsetti contributed to the discovery that tyrosine kinases and phosphodiesterases are involved in the neoplastic nature of the remodelled pulmonary vasculature of pulmonary hypertension (PH). She has studied these signalling pathways in great detail and explored their therapeutic potential for PH treatment successfully at the molecular, cellular and preclinical level.

She also played an instrumental role in forwarding several new treatment concepts to the clinical arena such as the tyrosine kinase inhibitor Imatinib and the sGC activator Riociguat. Her recent work suggest that forkhead box O (FoxO)1 transcription factor is a critical integrator of multiple signalling pathways driving PH, and reconstitution of FoxO1 activity offers a potential therapeutic option for PH was published in Nature Medicine 2014.

Current projects from Dr Pullamsetti's group pursue an integrated concept to understand the common pathophysiological processes and understand the role of FoxOs in other hyperproliferative lung diseases such as Pulmonary Fibrosis and Asthma.