A gathering...

After leaving Stanford on Sunday afternoon, I flew to San Diego for the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians.  PHA hosts a heavily trafficked exhibit booth here each year.  We also have many side meetings.  Last night, our board chair-elect, Laura D’Anna and I had the opportunity to attend Gilead’s Research Award dinner.  This is the second year of the program and it was great to see it continue to grow with new support awards being presented to PH researchers.  On Wednesday, I will be attending a similar awards event for new Actelion research awards grantees.  Every year we are seeing the opportunities expand.  It is a true joy.

As I type this, I’m sitting in a morning symposium (if you can call 6:00am to 7:30am morning) titled Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: Translating Evidence into Cases.  The PH programming is continuous here from early morning to late evening.  Given the numbers of PH patients compared to much larger conditions such as COPD, like other areas of our work, PH has achieved a presence far beyond our numbers.  This is happening because of the work of our physicians and researchers.  Their rapid progress is driving the extraordinary interest we are seeing here and at American Thoracic Society and other meetings.