The vascular contribution to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID) driven by cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) is now recognized as a major public health threat. In response to the call from NINDS for a multisite consortium dedicated to identifying and validating biomarkers for SVD-related VCID, we propose to form the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) VCID Biomarkers Coordinating Center.
The aims of the proposed coordinating center will be to provide outstanding scientific leadership and state-of-the-art administrative and data management infrastructure to the VCID biomarkers consortium. Specific strengths of the proposed MGH coordinating center include 1) the Principal Investigator's demonstrated high-level skill as a scientific pioneer in SVD biomarkers and an effective leader of complex multicenter projects and organizations, 2) an outstanding and experienced team of Administrative and Data Core directors, co-Investigators, and study staff capable of handling all aspects of a complex coordinating center, 3) innovative approaches to multimodal data handling and minimizing inter-scanner variations in MRI data, and 4) detailed organizational plans for efficient high-level decision-making by representative committees, creation of consortium standards for data collection and sharing, consortium-wide communication, and outreach to related external efforts. If selected, the proposed MGH coordinating center will be ideally positioned to lead the consortium to its goals of moving SVD biomarkers to the forefront of VCID clinical trials.
Despite advances in identifying the contribution of the brain's small blood vessels to age-related cognitive impairments, the field has not yet identified markers on scans or in body fluids that can be used to find an effective prevention treatment. This proposal is for a coordinating center to lead a team of outstanding sites in pooling their data to identify the best markers and apply them to future medical trials.
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