Alice Melão, MSc,  —

Opsumit (macitentan) failed to improve the cardiac function of people with pulmonary hypertension stemming from a heart problem, a Phase 2 clinical trial shows. The PH patients who took it were also at increased risk of fluid retention, researchers said. The therapy’s developer, Actelion, reported the results in the European…

Bellerophon Therapeutics has enrolled more than half the 188 patients it is seeking for its ongoing Phase 3 clinical trial of INOpulse as a treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension. The 50 percent enrollment mark is a milestone because it will trigger an interim analysis of the nitric oxide therapy’s results. Under…

Results of a Phase 1 clinical trial of Liquidia Technologies’ powder formulation of treprostinil for pulmonary hypertension were promising enough to advance it into Phase 3 trials, the company reports. The trial included 57 healthy volunteers who randomly received escalating doses of the therapy, LIQ861, ranging between 25 mcg and…

Interim data collected from a Japanese clinical setting demonstrates the post-marketing efficacy and safety of Volibris (Letairis, ambrisentan) for the treatment of patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Oral administration of the drug improved the mean pulmonary arterial pressure and pulmonary vascular resistance with a good safety profile. The…

Ubenimex, an oral dual-inhibitor developed by Eiger BioPharmaceuticals, has failed to demonstrate its effectiveness to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in the Phase 2 LIBERTY study. Initiated in 2016, the LIBERTY trial (NCT02664558) included 61 patients with diagnosed WHO Group 1 PAH across 45 clinical sites in…

A group of clinician-researchers with expertise in the field of cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases propose in a commentary that guidelines for the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension (PH) should be changed to include patients who may be at risk of developing the disease. The researchers contend that a broader definition of PH…

Tracleer (bosentan) may be of significant benefit to people with borderline or less severe pulmonary hypertension (PH) due to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), results from an ongoing clinical trial suggest. According to interim data collected from the Japanese study, Tracleer — an approved therapy for pulmonary…

SteadyMed Therapeutics will do more testing to answer American regulators’ questions about the safety and effectiveness of its PatchPump pulmonary hypertension therapy delivery device. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected the company’s New Drug Application for the device, which delivers Trevyent (treprostinil). It said SteadyMed needs to submit…

Anti-clotting agents can prevent pulmonary hypertension patients’ blood vessels from being blocked, but managing the agents can be challenging, a study reports. In fact, it contends that managing them in a less than optimal way can lead to severe complications. The team defined less than optimal as prescribing too little…

Adempas (riociguat) can be a safe way to treat children with severe pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) who don’t respond to first-line standard therapies, concludes a case report published in the journal Pulmonary Circulation. Despite recent medical advances, PAH remains a complex disease with poor outcomes in both…

Nearly one in every two people with advanced lung cancer also have pulmonary arterial hypertension, a study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine reports. The study, “Lung cancer–associated pulmonary hypertension: role of microenvironmental inflammation based on tumor cell-immune cell crosstalk,” showed that lung cancer progression leads…

Patients with elevated pulmonary arterial pressure, but not high enough to be diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension (PH), have a poorer prognosis compared to those with lower pulmonary arterial pressure. According to the findings of the study, “Prognostic Effect and Longitudinal Hemodynamic Assessment of Borderline Pulmonary Hypertension,”…