Anna R. Hemnes, MD

Anna Hemnes, MD, is a translational physician-scientist with a research focus on the role of altered metabolism in pulmonary vascular disease. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Allergy, Pulmonary, and Critical Care Medicine within the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Dr. Hemnes’ basic research is on the effect of BMPR2 mutation on insulin-mediated intracellular signaling in the pulmonary vasculature and the right ventricle. Her clinical research interests include the role of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome in human pulmonary vascular disease with a focus on genetic susceptibility to these conditions, and deep molecular phenotyping of pulmonary vascular disease. This interest in molecular phenotypes of pulmonary vascular disease led to her prior work demonstrating an Omic signature of vasodilator-responsive pulmonary arterial hypertension, one of the earliest publications demonstrating the feasibility of precision medicine in an ultra-rare pulmonary vascular disease. Her lab is currently investigating novel blood-based Omic predictive strategies for FDA-approved therapies for pulmonary arterial hypertension.
 
Dr. Hemnes sees patients in the Vanderbilt Center for Pulmonary Vascular Disease. She has effectively recruited people into clinical studies for pulmonary vascular disease, including the treatment of pulmonary hypertension, diagnostic modalities in pulmonary vascular disease and novel classification of pulmonary vascular disease.

Dr. Hemnes’ lab has a unique and powerful capacity to study molecular mechanisms of pulmonary vascular disease and right heart dysfunction in studies spanning cell culture and rodent models through human translational studies and clinical trials.