# A Precision Medicine Approach To Study Targetable Pathways in Vascular Dementia

> **NIH VA IK2** · VETERANS AFFAIRS MED CTR SAN FRANCISCO · 2021 · —

## Abstract

Dr. Elahi is an early career physician-scientist with specialty training in neurodegenerative disease and
experience in biomarker development, who seeks to develop her career at the VA. By combining her clinical
and molecular biology training, Dr. Elahi's long-term goal is to contribute to a better understanding of
vascular pathways in neurodegenerative disorders in order to improve early diagnoses and
development of disease-modifying treatments that will alter the cognitive trajectory of so many
individuals affected with vascular disease and at risk of dementia. In order to achieve this goal, Dr. Elahi
seeks additional training to develop her knowledge and skills in two major domains: (1) leadership in medicine,
by starting a specialized clinic at the VA and UCSF, to evaluate veterans with VCID from a variety of causes,
high systemic vascular disease / risk, strokes, TBI, auto-immune disease, and neurodegenerative disease and
to undertake their enrollment into research, (2) advancement of her scientific skills in multi-modal data-driven
analytical approaches for unbiased biomarker discovery.
 To better understand VCID, we need novel tools that can handle both the complexity of human disease
as well as the noisy nature of human-based biological and clinical data. Thus, novel approaches and methods
are needed. As a physician-scientist, Dr. Elahi is uniquely suited to pursue cutting-edge approaches to
advancement of diagnostics in VCID. However, with clinical training and responsibilities, she has not had the
opportunity to acquire adequate knowledge of unbiased biomarker discovery projects, nor the important
opportunity to develop her skills in advanced data-driven analytics.
 In this application, Dr. Elahi proposes to use her clinical expertise in neurodegenerative disease and
technical expertise in exosomal technologies to undertake hypothesis-driven modelling of contributions of
endothelial inflammation and pathogenic angiogenesis to adverse clinical and radiographic brain outcomes in
VCID (Aims 1 and 2). While in Aim 3, in collaboration with her VA mentor, Dr. Ferguson, she will for the first
time undertake the analysis of multi-dimensional data, including exosomal proteomics, brain imaging, retinal
imaging, clinical variables and cognitive scores. The scope of the work proposed is aligned with Dr. Elahi’s
goal of becoming a leader in translational VCID research. The hypothesis and data-driven aims will provide
complimentary approaches to cutting-edge research in the field of neurodegenerative disease. This Aim will
provide the opportunity to undertake data-driven discovery of discrete clinical-biomarker endophenotypes
within a heterogenous cohort of subjects.
 This research is expected to advance understanding of VCID with diagnostic and therapeutic relevance
and prepare Dr. Elahi for leadership in precision medicine approaches in VCID research. To ensure success of
the scientific and training goals of this work, Dr. Elahi has assembled a wor...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10053632
- **Project number:** 1IK2CX002180-01
- **Recipient organization:** VETERANS AFFAIRS MED CTR SAN FRANCISCO
- **Principal Investigator:** Fanny M Elahi
- **Activity code:** IK2 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** VA
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** —
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-01-01 → 2026-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10053632

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10053632, A Precision Medicine Approach To Study Targetable Pathways in Vascular Dementia (1IK2CX002180-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10053632. Licensed CC0.

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