“…These therapies if successful may also be helpful in managing HIV-PAH as mechanisms such as high PDGF expression [34], BMPR2/SMAD/TGF-β modulation [28, 31, 132], ECM remodeling and inflammation [32] have been reported in HIV-PAH including in response to drugs of abuse. Furthermore, recent studies have elucidated the protective role of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) [169–172] as well as extracellular vesicles /exosomes [173, 174] derived from MSCs in lung inflammation, vascular remodeling and PAH [170, 172, 175, 176]. Modulation of small non-coding miRNAs during the development of PAH including HIV-PAH further creates an opportunity to implement miR-based therapies [151, 167, 168, 174, 177].…”