Jason Yuan
Professor of Medicine
Section of Physiology
Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine
Department of Medicine
University of California, San Diego
Seminar Information
Pulmonary circulation is normally a low resistance and low pressure system. Pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP) is a function of cardiac output (CO) and pulmonary vascular resistance (PVR): PAP = CO x PVR. PVR is inversely proportional to the forth power of the intraluminal radius (r) of pulmonary artery. Regardless of initial pathogenic triggers, there are four major causes for the elevated PVR and PAP: sustained vasoconstriction, concentric pulmonary vascular remodeling (or wall thickening), in situ thrombosis (or occlusive intimal lesions), and increased pulmonary vascular stiffness. This presentation focuses on the discussion of normal function and structure of the pulmonary vasculature, the basic knowledge about pulmonary arterial hypertension and its potential pathogenic mechanisms related to Ca2+ signaling and intracellular signaling cascades associated with pulmonary vascular smooth muscle cell contraction and proliferation. The presentation will also provide an overview on how to conduct translational research on pulmonary vascular diseases including idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension, chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension, and pulmonary hypertension associated with lung diseases and hypoxia.
Dr. Jason Yuan is currently Professor and Director, Section of Physiology of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine. He received his medical training from Suzhou Medical College in 1983, his doctoral degree in cardiovascular physiology from Peking Union Medical College in China, and his postdoctoral research training at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). He joined the faculty at UMB in 1993 and then moved to UCSD in 1989, rising to the rank of Professor in 2003. Having worked in the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC, 2010-2014) and the University of Arizona (UA, 2014-2019) for the last ten years, Dr. Yuan came back to UCSD in 2019. The overall research interest of Dr. Yuan’s laboratory is pulmonary vascular pathobiology and genetic, cellular and molecular mechanisms of pulmonary vascular disease, with particular emphasis on the pathogenic role of ion channels and membrane receptors in the development and progression of idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension and chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. He has published more than 250 original research articles, review articles and editorials, and has edited/co-edited and co-authored nine books. He has received several honors for his research accomplishments including the Cournand and Comroe Young Investigator Award, the Established Investigator Award and the Kenneth D. Bloch Memorial Lectureship from the American Heart Association, the Guggenheim Fellowship Award from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Esteller Grover Lectureship from the American Thoracic Society, and the Robert M. Berne Distinguished Lectureship from The American Physiological Society. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He has served on many advisory committees and panels including Chair of the Respiratory Integrative Biology and Translational Research study section of the National Institutes of Health and Chair of the Pulmonary Circulation Assembly of the American Thoracic Society. He has also been very active in scholarly editing serving currently as the Editor-in-Chief the journal Pulmonary Circulation and Associate Editor of the American Journal of Physiology Cell Physiology. He is a leading editor of the Textbook of Pulmonary Vascular Disease (Springer, 2011).