Anna Ryan Hemnes, MD
Photo: Anna Ryan Hemnes

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Elected 2019

I am a translational physician-scientist with a research focus on the role of altered metabolism in pulmonary vascular disease. My basic research is on the effect of BMPR2 mutation on insulin-mediated intracellular signaling in the pulmonary vasculature and the right ventricle. My clinical research interests include the role of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome in human pulmonary vascular disease with a focus on genetic susceptibility to these conditions, and deep molecular phenotyping of pulmonary vascular disease. This interest in molecular phenotypes of pulmonary vascular disease has led to my prior work demonstrating an Omic signature of vasodilator-responsive pulmonary arterial hypertension, one of the earliest publications demonstrating the feasibility of precision medicine in an ultra rare pulmonary vascular disease. Our lab is now actively investigating novel blood-based Omic predictive strategies for FDA-approved therapies for pulmonary arterial hypertension. I actively see patients in the Vanderbilt Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease and have effectively worked with this population to recruit into clinical studies for pulmonary vascular disease, including the treatment of pulmonary hypertension, diagnostic modalities in pulmonary vascular disease and novel classification of pulmonary vascular disease. My lab has a unique and powerful capacity to study molecular mechanisms of pulmonary vascular disease and right heart dysfunction in studies spanning cell culture and rodent models through human translational studies and clinical trials.