https://www.scientificarchives.com/journal/archives-of-proteomics-and-bioinformatics Archives of Proteomics and Bioinformatics Research Article Identification of the Molecular Basis of Anti-fibrotic Effects of Soluble Guanylate Cyclase Activator Using the Human Lung Fibroblast Sunhwa Kim1*, Ashmita Saigal1, Weilong Zhao2, Peyvand Amini1, Alex M. Tamburino3, Subharekha Raghavan4, Maarten Hoek5# 1Cardiometabolic Disease Biology-Discovery, Merck & Co., Inc., South San Francisco, CA, USA 2Scientific informatics, Merck & Co., Inc., South San Francisco, CA, USA 3Discovery pGx, Merck & Co., Inc., West Point, PA, USA 4Chemistry Capabilities Accelerate Therapeutics, Merck & Co., Inc., Kenilworth, NJ, USA 5Cardiovascular, Metabolic, Renal, Ophthalmology Biology-Discovery, Merck & Co., Inc., South San Francisco, CA, USA #Present Address: Maze Therapeutics, South San Francisco, CA USA *Correspondence should be addressed to Sunhwa Kim;
[email protected] Received date: September 09, 2020, Accepted date: November 11, 2020 Copyright: © 2020 Kim S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is an irreversible and progressive fibrotic lung disease. Advanced IPF patients often demonstrate pulmonary hypertension, which severely impairs patients’ quality of life. The critical physiological roles of soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC)-cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) pathway have been well characterized in vasodilation and the corresponding therapies and pathway agonists have shown clinical benefits in treating hypertension. In recent years, many preclinical studies have demonstrated anti-fibrotic efficacy of sGC-cGMP activation in various experimental fibrosis models but the molecular basis of the efficacy in these models are not well understood.