Development of a Novel Diagnostic Probe for Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy

PROJECT SUMMARY Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy CAA is an age associated disease in which amyloid deposits form in the blood vessel walls of the central nervous system CAA is a major cause of spontaneous intracerebral haemorrhage in elderly people and an important contributor to age related cognitive decline Diagnosis is often missed by physicians as the presenting symptoms are similar to those of a stroke and can be further complicated as CAA is found in most Alzheimer s disease patients Current diagnosis of CAA involves expensive and invasive procedures such as an MRI and brain biopsy A critical goal in the field is to reliably identify CAA at the early asymptomatic stages of the disease to allow the best chance for correct disease modifying or preventive treatments to be effective This proposal aims to develop small molecule fluorescent probe as a novel diagnostic CAA Project Narrative Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy CAA is an age associated disease in which amyloid deposits form in the blood vessel walls of the central nervous system Recently these amyloids have been identified in retinal tissue in diseased individuals The proposed research aims to advance a diagnostic to image amyloid deposits associated with through the eye