Microarray analysis in pulmonary hypertension

Abstract

Microarrays are a powerful and effective tool that allows the detection of genome-wide gene expression differences between controls and disease conditions. They have been broadly applied to investigate the pathobiology of diverse forms of pulmonary hypertension, namely group 1, including patients with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension, and group 3, including pulmonary hypertension associated with chronic lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. To date, numerous human microarray studies have been conducted to analyse global (lung homogenate samples), compartment-specific (laser capture microdissection), cell type-specific (isolated primary cells) and circulating cell (peripheral blood) expression profiles. Combined, they provide important information on development, progression and the end-stage disease. In the future, system biology approaches, expression of noncoding RNAs that regulate coding RNAs, and direct comparison between animal models and human disease might be of importance.

FIGURE 1

The number of human microarray studies published since 2001 on lung homogenate (LH), laser capture microdissection (LCM), and isolated or circulating cells with a focus on pulmonary arterial hypertension or pulmonary hypertension associated with chronic lung diseases.

FIGURE 2

Venn diagram depicting overlapping and diverging microarray analysis results of the discussed studies. LH: lung homogenate, LCM: laser capture microdissection, FB: isolated fibroblast, PASMC: pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell; HMVEC: human microvascular endothelial cell; PBMC: peripheral blood mononuclear cell.