Objectives

Vascular dementia and heart failure represent major health burden to morbidity, mortality and quality of life.

Objective 1:

To perform first clinical validation of advanced MRI techniques that can identify microvascular rarefaction in the brain and heart.

Objective 2:

To develop non- invasive measures that can be used as surrogate biomarkers for cerebral and/or cardiac rarefaction (such as sublingual capillary health, angiographs of the retina, or biomarkers isolated from circulating microvesicles).

Objective 3:

To relate rarefaction to cognitive function in patients with VCI and to myocardial dysfunction in patients with HFpEF.

Objective 4:

To identify microvascular rarefaction as a key mechanism in the development of VCI and HFpEF and assess molecular mechanism, using animal models of comorbidities.

Objective 5:

To promote the outputs of CRUCIAL to actors in the HF and VCI field through communication, dissemination and capacity building activities. To communicate with patients and ensure that they have input in the research protocols and benefit from the research. To communicate with business leaders to identify exploitation opportunities.