Race Against Dementia: Team Vascular

A five-year funded project looking at the prevention and treatment of vascular cognitive impairment and dementia.

Race Against Dementia & Rosetrees Trust Logos

History and overview

Damage in the small blood vessels in the brain (small vessel disease (SVD)) is the commonest cause of vascular dementia, one in five of all dementias, and worsens cognition in people with Alzheimer’s disease. However, vascular causes of dementia are very neglected with very few trials of prevention or treatment, possibly because small vessel disease  is not well understood. 

This project, builds on the completed large phase II trial (LaCunar Intervention Trial 2, LACI-2), where two drugs (cilostazol and isosorbide mononitrate) were tested with patients with SVD-stroke and who were at high risk of vascular cognitive impairment and dementia. The drugs were tested to see if they improved small vessel function. After 1-year of treatment it was observed that there was a reduction in cognitive decline, dependency, recurrent stroke and improvement in quality of life. 

A new larger trial, LACI-3, will confirm these preliminary results in patients with SVD-stroke but also in other SVD clinical presentations. 

The establishment of our Race Against Dementia team, "Team Vascular"  will help to accelerate the LACI-2 & LACI-3 research into finding treatments for small vessel disease, vascular cognitive impairment and dementia.

About the Project

Team Vascular will concentrate on four workstreams:

  1. LACI-Cog
  2. LACI-Rat
  3. LACI-Hunt
  4. LACI-Ignite
Team Vascular Workstreams
Race Against Dementia Team Vascular Workstreams

Meet Our Team

Leading Team Vascular is Professor Joanna Wardlaw, alongside an impressive team of co-investigators:

As part of the funding we have also appointed two PhD students:

  • Maija Pyykkönen - LACI-Cog
  • Daria (Dasha) Gramenitskaya - LACI-Hunt

New PhD Opportunity

Testing and understanding potential drugs of benefit to cerebral small vessel disease in a rat model

Applications accepted up till Friday 12th December 2025.  Directly funded PhD Project. 

Supervisors:Prof Anna Williams(University of Edinburgh),Prof Malcolm Macleod(University of Edinburgh),Prof Joanna Wardlaw(University of Edinburgh)

Race Against Dementia: All Hands Team Vascular

Vascular causes of dementia are common. Cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) is the leading cause of vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) and vascular dementia (VaD) including in mixed dementias with Alzheimer’s disease. Despite causing up to 45% of dementias, research and established treatments for vascular causes of dementia are lacking. Race Against Dementia (RAD): Team Vascular - Prevention and Treatment of Vascular Cognitive Impairment and Dementia is a cross-disciplinary team working together to prevent and treat vascular causes of cognitive impairment and dementia, with expertise in cSVD, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, clinical research including trials, discovery science, and data science including experimental validity, literature and drug data interrogation. The Team comprises four interconnected workstreams: LACI-Cog, a pilot trial in patients with cognitive decline; LACI-Rat, conducting randomised trials in preclinical rodent models; LACI-Hunt, to develop efficient methods of searching for new drug targets and drugs; and LACI-Ignite, to advocate for the importance of vascular causes of dementia, foster awareness, and promote interest amongst early career and senior researchers, funders and policy-makers.

For further information including, how to apply, please see the click on the links below:

PhD opportunities | Centre for Regenerative Medicine 

Testing and understanding potential drugs of benefit to cerebral small vessel disease in a rat model at University of Edinburgh on FindAPhD.com

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