Pathologies

Right heart failure (RHF) is a fatal disease with no approved therapies. The most common cause of RHF is pulmonary hypertension (PH) that often results from left heart disease. Regardless of its etiopathogenesis, the development of right ventricular dysfunction (RVD) leads to a substantial deterioration of exercise capacity and quality of life, and a significant increase in cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.

Despite therapeutic advances for left heart disease, there are no therapies which specifically aim at improving the right ventricular function. Pulmonary vasodilators, such as endothelin receptor antagonists, PDE-5 inhibitors, and prostacyclin analogs, are approved for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a subgroup of PH, but these drugs have not been shown to be effective in other more common forms of PH, such as PH from left heart disease (post capillary PH). The standard of care remains limited to diuretics for relieving symptoms of congestion. Therefore, novel therapies are urgently needed for the treatment of RHF, a disease that is estimated to affect more than 30 million people worldwide.