Pittsburgh, September 2, 2022 -- PGY-7 resident Kamil Nowicki, MD, PhD, and department chair Robert Friedlander, MD, along with third-year University of Pittsburgh med student, Aditya Mittal, MD, have been awarded a $30,000 pilot grant from the University of Pittsburgh’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) for a project to create a blood test—Cerebral Aneurysm Test 7—to detect cerebral aneurysm formation.
The grant is part of CTSI’s CRISP program that supports research initiatives for "special populations frequently underrepresented in research."
The blood test (CAT-7) will measure seven cytokines to detect aneurysm formation, provide risk stratification and provide a probability of rupture metric. CAT-7 has been validated in a preclinical mouse model and retrospective human samples. The next step in the development of CAT-7 is a prospective study to validate the cytokines identified through retrospective studies.
Drs. Nowicki, Friedlander and Mittal plan to enroll 100-150 patients undergoing cerebral angiography for the treatment of cerebral aneurysms at UPMC from December of this year through July of 2023. Further development of this test will result in a point of care test that can routinely screen at-risk groups in the outpatient setting.