The CRUCIAL Objectives

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

The CRUCIAL Approach

We have built a consortium, CRUCIAL, which will develop a coordinated program to investigate the role of microvascular rarefaction in cognitive impairment and heart failure.

The CRUCIAL Impact

The impact of CRUCIAL’s work is to assess microvascular rarefaction in people with comorbidities such that they can be identified as having early symptoms of HFpEF and/or VCI.

The CRUCIAL Consortium

The consortium brings together 12 partners from multiple fields (clinicians, fundamental scientists, scientific SMEs, exploitation and dissemination SME, management SME, and a patient advocacy), representing 7 different countries.

The CRUCIAL Project

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

Comorbidities (hypertension, aging, diabetes, etc.) affect all organs, but the brain and heart are especially sensitive to these chronic stresses resulting in cognitive impairment (a mental disorder) and heart failure (a non-mental disorder). These comorbidities also induce a reduction in microvascular density, called microvascular rarefaction. Diagnosis of microvascular rarefaction is limited by the inability to assess microvascular density. We have built a consortium, CRUCIAL, which will develop a coordinated program to establish clinical tools to measure rarefaction and investigate the role of microvascular rarefaction in cognitive impairment and heart failure.

 

The CRUCIAL consortium brings together 12 partners from multiple fields (clinicians, fundamental scientists, scientific SMEs, exploitation and dissemination SME, management SME, and a patient advocacy), representing 7 different countries.

The CRUCIAL Consortium

The consortium brings together 12 partners from multiple fields (clinicians, fundamental scientists, scientific SMEs, exploitation and dissemination SME, management SME, and a patient advocacy), representing 7 different countries.

Vascular Dementia

7.7 million people in Europe are estimated to have dementia and with an aging population this is expected to double by 2040.

Vascular Dementia

Heart Failure

Every year in Europe, 3.6 million people are newly diagnosed with Heart Failure (HF).

Heart Failure

CRUCIAL solution

We will investigate sex difference in all patient cohorts and in the experimental model.

CRUCIAL solution
Elizabeth Jones

“The important difference is that we are not trying to diagnose the disease, but the loss of blood vessels that we think is the cause.“

Elizabeth Jones
VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology

Elizabeth Jones

“It is not known why people with these conditions are more likely to get these diseases, nor why the heart and brain are especially sensitive, but one theory is that all of these co-morbidities lead to a loss in the smallest blood vessels, or micro-circulation, around these organs.“

Elizabeth Jones
VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology

Elizabeth Jones

“There are pathways being activated that actively make the vessels regress. If we can stop that from happening, we can inhibit the loss of the microvessels.“

Elizabeth Jones
VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology

Elizabeth Jones

“They don’t die from lack of blood flow, instead the blood stops flowing after the vessels disappear.“

Elizabeth Jones
VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology

Prof. Robert van Oostenbrugge

“Very little research is being done into the relationship between pathologies of the heart and the brain, even though there are growing indications of a close connection. Often, we still focus too much on one disorder, for example heart failure, when in fact we should be paying better attention to the potential long-term consequences for the brain. We hope that this new study will show that microcirculation plays an important role in this process.“

Prof. Robert van Oostenbrugge
Head of Neurology at Maastricht UMC+

Elizabeth Jones

“By improving the imaging technology, we hope we will be able to identify who is at risk and needs to be monitored more closely.“

Elizabeth Jones
VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology

Partners

European countries

Project duration (months)

Third General Assembly for CRUCIAL

Third General Assembly for CRUCIAL

The CRUCIAL consortium held its third General Assembly on the 8 and 9 February 2023. The meeting was hosted by KU Leuven and was the first face to face meeting for the consortium since the kick off of the project in February 2020. Representatives from all partner...

Second General Assembly for CRUCIAL

Second General Assembly for CRUCIAL

The CRUCIAL consortium held its second General Assembly on February 10, 2022. The meeting was held virtually once again, during which all consortium representatives discussed and decided to extend the project's duration by one year. The COVID-19 pandemic had a...

Regular meetings of the basic science work packages

Regular meetings of the basic science work packages

To ensure productive collaboration, the CRUCIAL partners involved in the basic science work packages of the project hold regular meetings. These meetings include representatives from Maastricht University (UM), the Flanders institute for biotechnology (VIB) and KU...

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