NOGO could go far

A team of U.S. and Canadian researchers has shown that blocking production of NOGO-B in pulmonary arteries could prevent the deleterious vascular remodeling seen in pulmonary arterial hypertension.¹ If future studies demonstrate that NOGO-B inhibitors could treat disease that already is established, the compounds could become the first disease modifiers for pulmonary arterial hypertension, which currently is treated with vasodilators that alleviate disease symptoms but do not address underlying causes.

In pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), increased proliferation and resistance to apoptosis in pulmonary vasculature-but not in systemic vasculature-results in obstruction of the pulmonary arteries, hypertension, right ventricular hypertrophy and eventual death...