The Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA), an organization that works to bring greater hope to patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH) and their families by improving care, advancing research, and fostering a sense of community, recently announced the three recipients of its 2015 Robyn Barst Pediatric PH Research and Mentoring Awards.

Grants from the Barst Fund support a year of mentoring for young researchers and clinicians in pediatric pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Grantees work with an experienced professional, gaining training and oversight, through to completion, into their proof-of-concept research projects in pediatric PAH treatment, management, and research, PHA said in a press release.

The researchers chosen for the one-year, $50,000 grant awards are Vitaly Oleg Kheyfets, PhD, Kara Nicole Goss, MD, and David Brian Frank, MD, PhD. The three 2015 Barst Fund awards were given through PHA’s Named Research Grants Opportunity, and consist of the Joel Belt Pediatric PH Research and Mentoring Grant, the Cordelia’s Pediatric PH Research and Mentoring Grant, and The Matthew and Michael Wojciechowski Pediatric PH Research and Mentoring Grant.

Dr. Goss is an assistant professor of pulmonary and critical care at the University of Wisconsin. She has received the Joel Belt Pediatric PH Research and Mentoring Grant, which will be used to study in mice the long-term risk of PH or heart failure in premature infants who reach maturity.

Dr. Kheyfets, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Denver/Anschutz Medical Campus, has been awarded the Cordelia’s Pediatric PH Research and Mentoring grant to study why friction associated with blood flow is reduced in PH patients. His research will potentially lead to the creation of a new blood test to understand pulmonary artery health in children.

Dr. Frank, cardiology instructor at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, has been granted the Matthew and Michael Wojciechowski Pediatric PH Research and Mentoring Grant.

His study will be conducted in mice, with the goal of providing new insight into the hypothesis that reactivated cells after lung injury may be able to renew lost lung tissue, averting the development of PH in infants with a lung disease.

More information on the association’s grants is available through the PHA Research Program and the PHA Named Grant Program.