A $3.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will support a University of Rhode Island neuroscientist’s research to identify early-stage biomarkers for a brain disease often found to coexist with Alzheimer’s disease.

The five-year grant was awarded to William Van Nostrand, Hermann Professor of Neuroscience at URI’s George & Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience. The funding will help fill a critical research niche in early detection of cerebral amyloid angiopathy, a disease in which amyloid deposits form in small and medium blood vessels in the central nervous system, contributing to dementia and brain hemorrhages. Although the disease is common in the elderly, it often isn’t diagnosed until its late stages, when bleeds can be detected by brain imaging.

“Early and accurate diagnosis of this condition has remained elusive,” said Van Nostrand. “There is a need for biomarkers for early stages of disease prior to the presence of lesions detected by neuroimaging. The purpose of this project is to fill this void by developing and validating robust biological fluid markers for CAA.”

Read more on URI Today.