Award winners

Andrew Bush is Professor of Paediatrics and Paediatric Respirology, National Heart and Lung Institute, and Centre for Paediatrics and Child Health, Imperial College (Foundation Director) and Consultant Paediatric Chest Physician at Royal Brompton Hospital. He has supervised more than 50 MD and PhD degrees, co-authored more than 750 papers in peer review journals, and written more than 130 chapters in books and monographs. In 2022 he was the first paediatrician to be awarded the British Thoracic Society medal, which is awarded annually to a someone who has greatly contributed to respiratory medicine or science. Prof. Bush was awarded the 2024 James Spence Medal and an Honorary Life Fellowship, the highest honour of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

Marc Humbert is Dean of the Medical School and Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University Paris-Saclay, France. He is the Director of the Respiratory and Intensive Care Medicine Department, French Pulmonary Hypertension Reference Centre, Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris. Marc Humbert was President of the European Respiratory Society (2022) and Chief Editor of the European Respiratory Journal (2013-2017). He is vice-coordinator of the European Reference Network for rare and low prevalence respiratory diseases (ERN-LUNG). Since 2018, Clarivate Analytics has listed Marc Humbert as one of the world's most highly cited researchers in the field of Clinical Medicine.

Pieter S. Hiemstra is a professor and the head of the PulmoScience Lab at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). Since starting his PhD training at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Prof. Hiemstra has been actively involved in medical teaching across various curricula, including Medical, Biomedical Sciences, and Biopharmaceutical Sciences. His roles have included teaching and serving on committees, notably chairing the Educational Committee for the Biomedical Sciences curriculum at LUMC for seven years. Throughout his career, Prof. Hiemstra has supervised 26 PhD students who have successfully defended their theses on topics in Respiratory Science. Within the European Respiratory Society (ERS), Prof. Hiemstra has served in various roles, including group chair and secretary for group 3.2, Assembly Head, organiser of research seminars, and session chair at the ERS Congress (including Congress chair for the 2015 ERS Congress in Amsterdam). He has contributed to the ERJ as an Associate and Section Editor.

Eva Polverino is a pulmonary patho-physiologist who has been working in the field of respiratory infections since 2007 and has engaged with the European Respiratory Society (ERS) since 2000. She has always worked in an academic context at the University of Pisa and the University of Barcelona, with a constant focus on education at both the local level, supervising various doctoral theses and junior investigators to develop their careers, and at the European level through the ERS.

Within the ERS, Dr Polverino has actively contributed to organising numerous educational activities such as courses, webinars, scientific symposia, postgraduate courses, and research seminars. Between 2011 and 2023, she held various roles within Assembly 10 (respiratory infections), contributing to the establishment of a long-term educational plan to cover all relevant disease areas and hot topics through both congress sessions and other educational activities. In 2019, Prof. Polverino helped launch a new transversal cystic fibrosis group (including both adult and child care) to address educational and research requirements and develop structured educational activities to support pulmonologists and other medical respiratory professionals working with CF patients.

Dr Polverino profoundly believes that education, communication, and collaboration are key elements to promoting better respiratory health and achieving a stronger scientific community for the future.

Marlies Wijsenbeek is a pulmonologist and professor of interstitial lung diseases (ILD). She is Chair of the multidisciplinary expert centre of interstitial lung diseases and sarcoidosis at Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam.

Prof Wijsenbeek’s research interests include patient-centred outcome measures in ILDs, e-health, and trial design and new therapies in pulmonary fibrosis and sarcoidosis. She leads several national and international research consortia. She currently is incoming secretary of Assembly 12 (ILD) of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and chair of the functional committee for continued education of European Reference Network-Lung. She co-organises the ERS-ILD school and rare lung disease school, besides other educational meetings. She is a member of the scientific advisory boards of different patient associations, including the European Pulmonary Fibrosis Federation (EU-IPFF). Prof Wijsenbeek also serves as associate editor of the European Respiratory Journal and is fellow of the ERS and was awarded the ERS mid-career gold medal in Interstitial Lung Disease.

Sophia Schiza is a Professor of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine, Head of Sleep Disorders Unit of the Department of Respiratory Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Crete. Prof Schiza, has authored more than 160 peer-reviewed articles on her main research interests in SBD, IPF and OSA, COPD Overlap Syndrome. She is one of the Editors of the ERS Sleep Handbook (published in 2023), Field Editor of Sleep Medicine. She has also an increasing role in the generation of guidelines and Task Force statements within ERS and in collaboration with ESRS and ATS.

One of her main tasks, in National and European level, is the development of educational activities, University based PhD programs and Fellowships for Sleep with a main focus on Sleep Breathing Disorders. From 2016, she has been serving as Chair of the Educational committee of Hellenic Sleep Research Society (HSRS). In a European level she is highly engaged in the development of numerous educational activities for the ERS Assembly 4 Sleep Disordered Breathing in collaboration also with the European Sleep Research Society and with the American Thoracic Society.

Lastly, she has been the supervisor of numerous master's, PhD’s, and research projects.

Prof. von Leupoldt studied psychology at the University of Hamburg (Germany) where he received his PhD in 2003 and his Postdoctoral Lecture Qualification for psychology in 2007. He worked as a Research Fellow at the Department of Physiological Sciences and the NIMH Center for the Study of Emotion and Attention at the University of Florida, Gainesville (USA) between 2008-2010. He worked as a Principal Investigator/Research Fellow at the Department of Psychology, University of Hamburg (Germany) and the Department of Systems Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany) between 2006 and 2013. Since 2013, he is Professor at the University of Leuven, Belgium and current chair of the Research Group Health Psychology.

He is examining the interactions between psychology and the respiratory system in healthy individuals and in patients with respiratory disease (COPD, asthma) with a focus on bio-psycho-social aspects of breathlessness. He is specifically interested in how psychological factors such as affective states, personality traits, learning processes, expectations and social aspects interact with the subjective experience and the brain processing of breathlessness as well as with the treatment of affected patients. Using a multi-modal approach, he is studying these interactions together with collaborators from different disciplines (e.g., rehabilitation sciences, pneumology, neurosciences), both in the lab and in clinical settings. Partly, these studies extend to the perception of other aversive bodily sensations such as pain and include self-report measures, behavioural studies, exercise tests, peripheral psychophysiological measurements, magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography. He has published extensively in leading journals of different scientific fields including respiratory medicine, psychology, neurosciences and pain and has served in active roles for several international societies of these fields.

Dr Molina Molina is a pulmonologist MD and PhD in Biomedicine. She is a chief of the ILD Unit at the University Hospital of Bellvitge and the Respiratory Research Group, Institute Biomedical Research of Bellvitge (IDIBELL); Scientific Director of IDIBELL and the National Consortium of Research in Respiratory Diseases (CIBERES). Active member of the ERS Assembly 12 (organization of Research Seminars, participation in ILD courses and ERS Congress activities, Secretary and Chief of Rare-ILD Group). Scientific career focused on ILDs, especially fibrotic ILDs and ultra-rare ILDs, combining basic and clinical research, and fostering cross-sectional and translational studies with results quickly applicable to patient care. H-Index 37, 198 articles; 53 D1 and 101 Q1. Currently coordinating a national program for precision medicine (PRECISION-ILD, ISCIII.CIBERES). Highlighted biomedical research achieved milestones: 1) clinical utility and applicability of the telomeric and genetic studies in ILD, contributing to consensus documents and national settings for clinical practice, 2) identification of the profibrotic role of angiotensin system and its regulation as potential anti-fibrotic pathway, 3) design and coordination of clinical trials as sponsor in LAM, post-covid and IPF, 4) patent PCT/EP2015/068650. Direction of 9 doctoral theses, 8 of them defended in the last 5 years. Training and promotion of new researchers who currently contribute to the ILD study in different regions of the Spanish national healthcare system and other countries. Collaboration and participation in activities of patient associations (EU-IPFF, ELF, PFF, AFEFPI, AIRE, AELAM).

After an MD in Paediatrics in Munich, Germany Prof. Latzin completed his clinical training in Paediatrics and Paediatric Pulmonology in Munich and Bern. In addition, he completed a PhD in Epidemiology and Respiratory Physiology with Urs Frey and Claudia Kuehni in Bern. After several years as Tenure-Track Assistant Professor for environmental effects on Paediatric Lung Development in Basel, Switzerland, Prof. Latzin was appointed head of the division of Paediatric Respiratory Medicine and Allergology at the University Children’s Hospital Bern in 2016. In 2021 he was appointed Vice-Director of the University Children’s Hospital Bern.

His research interest lies in understanding lung development in childhood, both in health and disease. Among others, he is a local and principal investigator for two large cohort studies – namely the Swiss Cystic Fibrosis Infant Lung Development Cohort (www.scild.ch) and Basel-Bern Infant Lung Development Cohort (www.bild-cohort.ch). Further Prof. Latzin is a part of a large national paediatric research project (Swiss Personalized Health Network) that aims to make routine clinical data available for research in a standardized and systematic way, including lung function data.

He has published more than 250 pubmed-listed articles.

Kevin Blyth is Professor of Respiratory Medicine in the School of Cancer Sciences at the University of Glasgow. He splits his time between the Wolfson Wohl Cancer Research Centre, the CRUK Scotland Institute and the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) in Glasgow. At QEUH, he leads the Glasgow Pleural Disease Unit, a multidisciplinary team delivering all aspects of pleural medicine, including thoracoscopy, thoracic ultrasound and clinical trials. He founded the Macmillan Scottish Mesothelioma Network, which coordinates care and access to clinical trials for patients across Scotland. This service, which comprises clinical leads and nurse specialists in 5 cities, a weekly specialist MDT and national quality assurance systems, was initially pump-primed using a £1.2M funding award from Macmillan Cancer Support, before successful adoption into business-as-usual by NHS Scotland in 2022. Prof. Blyth is currently National Clinical Lead for Mesothelioma. He also leads an international, translational research program focused on mesothelioma.

He is Chief Investigator of the PREDICT-Meso International Accelerator Network, funded by CRUK/FAECC/IARC (£5M), which currently comprises 128 investigators from 79 institutions across 14 countries. PREDICT-Meso is focused on understanding the biology responsible for mesothelioma evolution and development of therapies suitable for precision prevention and treatment of stage I disease. The PREDICT-Meso programme currently supports more than a dozen PhD studentships with active research streams spanning tissue banking, multi-omic tissue phenotyping, pre-clinical models, drug screening, risk prediction and advanced imaging, including use of artificial intelligence. Prof. Blyth is Chair of Assembly 11.2 (Pleural & Mediastinal Malignancies), Chair of the Mesothelioma UK Clinical Expert Panel and a Trustee of Mesothelioma UK. He is an Associate Editor of Thorax and a member of the IASLC Mesothelioma Committee. He is Academic Lead for the Living Lab Radiogenomic Project, part of the Living Lab Programme funded by UKRI Strength in Places Fund (£38M).

Professor Mona Bafadhel is the Chair of Respiratory Medicine at King’s College London (KCL) and works in the School of Immunology and Microbial Sciences, within the Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine. Mona is also the Director of the new King’s Centre for Lung Health and the Professor of Asthma+Lung UK. In 2012, Mona was awarded her PhD in ‘Biomarkers of exacerbations of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)’. Mona is a clinical academic researcher and consultant respiratory physician and was awarded an NIHR postdoctoral fellowship between 2014-2018, which she held at the University of Oxford. In 2019,

Mona was awarded the prestigious Gaulstonian Lectureship from the Royal College of Physicians, London. She is the 4th woman and 1st woman from an ethnic minority in the awards 350-year-old history to have received this for excellence in the Clinical Sciences. Mona has research interests in the field of Airways Disease, particularly the investigation of the mechanisms underlying exacerbations of COPD. This has led to studying the role of the eosinophil in COPD, using statistical approaches to define particular sub-groups and to the delivery of novel therapeutic strategies to patients, working across the translational spectrum. Her work on the peripheral blood eosinophil in COPD has influenced international guidance and is now routinely used managing patients with COPD.

Emiel Wouters (born 16th of May 1953) is a respiratory physician and scientist with a remarkable career spanning over four decades. After qualifying in medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven and residencies in the university hospitals of Leuven and Maastricht, he was appointed as chest physician in 1984 at the department of respiratory medicine of the university medical center of Maastricht. After his appointment as professor in respiratory medicine at the Maastricht University in 1992, he has been instrumental in establishing and developing the respiratory department, which became a world-class academic centre for all aspects of respiratory care. Under his leadership CIRO, originally a Dutch asthma center, became an internationally acclaimed center of excellence for pulmonary rehabilitation and integrated care for chronic respiratory patients and was one of the pioneers of incorporating advanced care into the management of severe respiratory conditions. For his contributions to pulmonary rehabilitation, he received the Pioneer Award of the American Thoracic Society Pulmonary Rehabilitation Assembly in 2012. During his career, he supervised and mentored 47 residents in their training to become chest physicians.

Besides visionary leader, Emiel Wouters is a profilic researcher. After his PhD thesis on clinical application of impedance measurement in 1987, he laid the foundations for his research program on COPD, exploring multiple traits and physiological aspects of this complex condition. He pioneered in the recognition of COPD as a multimorbid condition and his research has contributed to advancing knowledge and practice of personalised COPD care. He published over 900 peer-reviewed papers on COPD and related topics with 75000 citations. His scholarly impact is reflected by his top ten ranking of lifetime scholars in pulmonology. He successfully supervised 80 PhD students. For his exceptional contribution to the field of respiratory medicine he was honoured with the Swieringa Medal in 2019, as well as with the Nutrim lifetime achievement award and the MUMC award in 2019 for his dedication to health care and his outstanding research career. He served various national and international societies in different roles and functions. He was elected as a fellow of the ERS in 2014 and of the Academia Europaea in 2022.

Leo Heunks (1969) is currently appointed professor of intensive care medicine and head of department of intensive care at the Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen (NL).

From 1996 - 2000 he was a PhD student in respiratory physiology at Radboud University. During the PhD program he visited Mayo Clinic, Rochester (MN) for 7 months to study skeletal muscle single fiber mechanics and intracellular calcium imaging (mentor prof Gary Sieck). Thereafter he was trained as a pulmonologist, followed by a 2-year fellowship in intensive care medicine and became consultant in intensive care at the same university hospital. He was co-founder of the first specialized ventilator-weaning unit in the Netherlands and chair of the Dutch guideline for difficult weaning. In 2016 he was appointed professor of experimental intensive care at the Free University Medical Center in Amsterdam and in 2021 was he appointed professor of experimental intensive care at the Erasmus University / Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam (NL). In 2023 he became head of department of intensive care children and adults at the Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen NL.

His clinical and research interests focus on respiratory physiology, the effects of critical illness and mechanical ventilation on respiratory muscle function, difficult ventilator weaning and ARDS. He was research fellow at Loyola University Medical Centre, Chicago (Dr Tobin) and Saint Michaels Hospital Toronto (Dr Sinderby and Dr Brochard). In both clinical work and research, he promotes the understanding of physiological principles.

He has been active in the European Respiratory Society in different roles, including secretary and chair of assembly 2, Editor of the ERS “handbook of invasive mechanical ventilation”, Editor of ERS Monograph “pulmonary emergencies”, co-chair of the ERS clinical research collaboration “Weansafe”, two times congress chair of the ERS Respiratory Failure & Mechanical Ventilation Conference (Berlin) and member of the ERS/ESICM guideline committee weaning from mechanical ventilation. Other activities include associate editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, member of the executive committee of the Plug (pleural pressure working group), and visiting professor at Zhejiang University School of medicine, Hangzhou, China. He been invited to present at several international conferences including ERS, ESICM, euro-ELSO, SMART and ISICEM. He has published over 250 peer reviewed manuscripts and numerous book chapters.

Jørgen Vestbo is a Professor emeritus at the Division of Infection Immunity and Respiratory Medicine, School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester in the UK. He also now has a clinic in Copenhagen where he sees patients 4 days per week, and he is affiliated the Respiratory Research Unit at Gentofte Hospital.

He graduated from the University of Copenhagen in 1984 and defended his doctoral thesis in 1992. He has specialized in Internal Medicine and Respiratory Medicine in Denmark, and he has worked clinically in both Denmark and the UK. He has been professor at the University of Manchester since 2003 and for years he was the Respiratory Theme Lead for the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre. In parallel, he has been professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Copenhagen and University of Southern Denmark.

His main research interests have been epidemiology and clinical research in COPD, with the aim of linking these fields. He has worked with Danish colleagues on data from the Copenhagen City Heart Study and the Copenhagen General Population Study with a particular focus on the natural history of COPD, and he was involved in initiating the ERS Clinical Research Collaboration CADSET. He has been on steering committees for clinical cohort studies such as the British Early COPD Network (BEACON) cohort, and he has previously co-chaired the 3-year ECLIPSE study aimed at better characterizing COPD. He has been on steering committees of many large COPD trials (e.g., the Copenhagen Lung Study, TRISTAN, TORCH, FLAME, TRINITY, TRILOGY, TRIBUTE and SUMMIT, and he was PI on one of the largest effectiveness trials in COPD, The Salford Lung Study.

He has been involved in the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) for more than a decade and he chaired the Science Committee in 2009-13. He has been an Advisor to WHO, both in Geneva and Copenhagen (Region Europe), and he is currently a member of the Medical and Chemicals Technical Options Committee for the UNEP Montreal Protocol.

He has been a member of ERS since its inception, having been an SEPCR member before that. He served as ERS President 2015-16 in and as Advocacy Chair 2019-20, the latter with a focus on prevention of tobacco addiction.

Dr Viegi was born in 1953 in Pisa, Italy, where he graduated in Medicine (cum laude), specialized in Respiratory Medicine (cum laude) and Occupational Medicine (with full mark). He developed his entire research and hospital career (from Fellow to Director of Research) at the National Research Council (CNR) in Pisa and in Palermo. As a retired CNR Director of Research, he is currently a senior Research Associate at the CNR Institute of Clinical Physiology (IFC), Pisa. In 1990, he was a visiting research scientist at the Division of Respiratory Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. From 2001, he is Professor of "Health effects of pollution", School of Environmental Sciences, University of Pisa. From 2008 to 2019, he was Director of the CNR Institute of Biomedicine and Molecular Immunology (IBIM), Palermo, Italy.

Dr Viegi’s main research interests are: respiratory pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of chronic respiratory and allergic diseases, epidemiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma, environmental epidemiology (outdoor and indoor pollution). He conducted two major longitudinal epidemiological surveys on general population samples in Italy (Po Delta and Pisa) and was principal investigator/coordinator of large multicenter Italian studies on pharmaco-epidemiology (ARGA, AGAVE) and environmental epidemiology (BEEP, BIGEPI, Indoor CCM). Further, he was coordinator of the CNR Unit in European multicenter studies on indoor pollution in schools (ENVIE, HESE, SINPHONIE, RESPIRA) and nursing homes (GERIE).

ERS founding member (1990), Dr Viegi was elected Secretary of Assembly Group 6.01 Epidemiology (1995-98), Head of Assembly 6 Epidemiology and Occupation (1998-2002), President Elect (2004-05), President (2005-06), and Immediate Past President (2006-07). During the Presidential year, he was FIRS Chair. His Presidency’s major achievements were: inclusion of respiratory diseases within the 7th EU Framework Programme for Research; institution of the ERS Environment and Health Committee; co-foundation of the Global Alliance against chronic Respiratory Diseases (GARD) (Planning Group Member until 2013 and from 2017 to 2022); publication of the 2005 documents of the ATS-ERS task Force on standardization of lung function (he was a co-chair). Other ERS activities: coeditor of the first European Lung White Book and of the ERS Monograph “Respiratory epidemiology”; author of a chapter in the ERS Handbook of Respiratory Medicine; reviewer for ERS journals, Congress abstracts, fellowship and task force applications.

He is the author of 429 original papers

Dr Antoni Torres obtained his degree in Medicine in 1977 at the University of Barcelona. He performed his residency in Internal Medicine and Pulmonology at Hospital Clinic, Barcelona (1978-1981) and he started working as staff member of the Pulmonary Care Department at Hospital Clinic in 1983. Dr Antoni Torres has been working in biomedical research since 1985 at the Pulmonary Department of Hospital Clinic and University of Barcelona. He is a full Professor of Medicine at University of Barcelona. From 1987 to 1988 he performed a Research Fellowship program at Harvard University, Massachussetts General Hospital. From that period, Dr Torres published experimental studies carried out in a sheep model, studying postthoracotomy muscular function and the evaluation of different methods of mechanical ventilation. The results of these investigations earned him the Edward Shanoff Award for research at Harvard University. When he returned to Barcelona, Dr Torres developed several lines of research in the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit of Hospital Clinic, IDIBAPS (Institut d´Investigacions August Pi I Sunyer), and University of Barcelona.

Dr Antoni Torres is a full professor of Medicine (Pulmonology) at University of Barcelona. He has been Director and Chief of the Pulmonology Department, and Director of the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit at Hospital Clinic of Barcelona. He leads translational research group focused on respiratory infections, ARDS, and critical care. His current H-Index is 110 (web of Science). He received several research awards: Edward Shanoff (Harvard University), Josep Trueta, Lilly award, COMB, Icrea Academia, and Murray Korndfel (ACCP).

Dr Selman trained in Pulmonary Medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He joined the Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias in Mexico where he established the first Research Branch, and since 1983, is the Interstitial Lung Diseases Program Director. Dr Selman has had a longstanding interest in ILDs, mainly in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and hypersensitivity pneumonitis where he has made important contributions both in the clinical area as well as in the pathogenic mechanisms, and he has earned international recognition as one of the foremost experts in pulmonary fibrosis.

He has published around 350 original papers, reviews, and book chapters, and was Associate and Deputy Editor of the Blue Journal. He has achieved several distinctions including the National Prize in Sciences in Mexico, and the Recognition Award for Scientific Achievement of the ATS. This year, he received the ATS J. Burns Amberson Lecture which recognizes major contributions to clinical or basic research that have advanced our fundamental understanding of the basic, translational, or clinical approaches to respiratory disease. In 2022, the Mexican Secretary of Health honoured him by naming the Research Unit of its Institute as Dr. Moises Selman Building of Respiratory Research. Among his key scientific achievements are the proposal that IPF, historically considered as a fibrosis caused by unresolved chronic inflammation, was an epithelial-driven fibrosis. He participated in the first genomic studies performed in IPF and contributed to the pioneering research identifying the transcriptional signatures that distinguish some of the fibrosing lung diseases.

Dr Selman has also focused on the role of aging in lung behaviour studying a large cohort of individuals over 65 years and models of natural and accelerated aging. Based on this research he coined the term "Fibroaging" as a pathologic characteristic associated with aging, that was incorporated in the recently published “Hallmarks of Aging”. More recently, he published a provocative proposal suggesting that Usual interstitial pneumonia should be considered as a stand-alone diagnostic entity.

Dr Selman has served on multiple international working groups, including the ERS, ATS, and ACCP. He was a founding member of the Latin American Thoracic Association, and in Mexico, was President of the Mexican Society of Pulmonology. Dr Selman is passionate about training physician-scientists and has received numerous accolades as an outstanding teacher, mentor, and physician. He established a highly regarded course Interstitial Pulmonary Diseases at the Faculty of Medicine of the UNAM. Currently is a Distinguished Investigator in its Institute.

Prof. Dr Frances de Man is head of the Pulmonary Hypertension Experimental (PHEniX) laboratory in the Amsterdam university medical centers, The Netherlands. She supervises the translational research on right heart failure in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). By combining state-of-the-art in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro techniques in patients, animal models and unique RV cardiomyocytes of PAH-patients, it is her ambition to find molecular mechanisms and therapeutic targets to make the right ventricle more resilient to the increased pressure overload, as is the case in PAH. This is with the ultimate goal of preventing the development of right heart failure and improving the prognosis of PAH-patients.