International CAA Association

 

The International CAA Association (ICAAA) was founded in 2014 with the goal of improving scientific understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). The ICAAA is comprised of leading clinicians and scientists in the CAA field drawn from medical centers and universities around the world. The ICAAA organizes bi-annual scientific meetings of the international CAA community, collaborative research projects, and consensus recommendations, all aimed at improving the condition of individuals with this increasingly recognized disease of the brain’s small blood vessels.

At the 9th international CAA conference in Munich in 2024 – where we celebrated our 10th anniversary – we thanked several board members who were there from the beginning, and welcomed a new generation to serve the ICAAA community into the future. The goals for the next five years are to professionalize the association, grow and diversify the community, provide formal membership opportunities, invest in our early career researchers, develop intentional patient engagement and outreach efforts, and increase CAA awareness.

Board Members:

Eric E. Smith, MD
Chair

University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

Dr. Eric Smith is Professor of Neurology, Radiology, and Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary, and the holder of the endowed Katthy Taylor Chair in Vascular Dementia. He directs the Cognitive Neurosciences Clinic at Foothills Medical Centre and is a member of the Calgary Stroke Program. His research uses neuroimaging and other biomarkers to diagnose CAA and understand its relationship to cognitive symptoms.

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Susanne J. van Veluw, PhD
Co-Chair

Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Dr. Susanne van Veluw is Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and has a translational CAA research lab in the department of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (US). Her research program is focused on unraveling the pathophysiology of microvascular injury in CAA, using complementary imaging techniques in the human and mouse brain.

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Gargi Banerjee, MD PhD
ECR Champion

University College London, London, UK

Dr Gargi Banerjee is an NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Neurology; she works as a physician and researcher in London, UK, at University College London (UCL) and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square. Dr Banerjee has worked in CAA research since 2015; her current focus is iatrogenic CAA, a recently described and rare form of CAA that occurs many years after certain medical procedures. Dr Banerjee is responsible for national and international registries for iatrogenic CAA, and also conducts lab research that investigates whether the biology of iatrogenic CAA has relevance to other, more common, types of CAA.

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Mark A. van Buchem, MD PhD
Member at Large

Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

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Ellis van Etten, MD PhD
Secretary

Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

Dr. Ellis van Etten is a vascular neurologist and clinical researcher epidemiologist at Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden. She is a principal investigator of the CAA research group, focusing on sporadic and hereditary Dutch-type CAA, with an emphasis on improving detection, diagnosis, and predicting hemorrhages in CAA. She has expertise in all clinical phenotypes of CAA, with a particular focus on the diagnosis and management of CAA-related inflammation.

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Steven M. Greenberg, MD PhD
Past-Chair

Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

Dr. Steven M. Greenberg, Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, holds the John J. Conway Endowed Chair, directs the Hemorrhagic Stroke Research Program, and is Vice-Chair of Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Greenberg has authored over 350 research articles and 100 reviews, and editorials in the areas of hemorrhagic stroke and small vessel brain disease. He has served as Principal Investigator for the NINDS MarkVCID biomarkers consortium coordinating center, past chair of the International CAA Association, the 2022 American Heart Association Guidelines for Management of Spontaneous Intracerebral Hemorrhage Writing Group, and the American Heart Association International Stroke Conference.

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Alifiya Kapasi, PhD
Membership

Rush University, Chicago, IL, USA

Dr. Alifiya Kapasi is a translational research neuropathologist with the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology, Rush University Medical Center. She also co-leads the Rush ADRC Neuropathology Core. Her research uses tissue-based histopathology and neuroimaging approaches to study the role of cerebrovascular disease in aging, Alzheimer's disease, and neurodegeneration.

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Gabor Petzold, MD PhD
Patient engagement & Outreach

DZNE Bonn, Bonn, Germany

Dr. Gabor Petzold is Professor of Vascular Neurology and Chair of the Department of Vascular Neurology at University Hospital Bonn, Germany, and Director of Clinical Research at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE). His research focusses on mechanisms of neuroinflammation and brain clearance in CAA.

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Ashkan Shoamanesh, MD PhD
Treasurer

McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

Dr. Ashkan Shoamanesh is an Associate Professor of Medicine (Div. of Neurology) and a stroke neurologist at McMaster University / Hamilton Health Sciences, where he holds the Marta and Owen Boris Chair in Stroke Research and Care. He is the founding Director of the Hemorrhagic Stroke Research Program and a Senior Scientist at the affiliated Population Health Research Institute in Hamilton, Canada. His clinical trials program is working on establishing new treatments and standards of care that reduce the global burden of stroke and cerebrovascular disease.

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Hsin-Hsi Tsai, MD PhD
Communication

National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

Dr. Hsin-Hsi Tsai is Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurology at the National Taiwan University. Her research interests and clinical specialty mainly focus on diagnosis and prognosis in intracerebral hemorrhage, novel therapeutics for intracerebral hemorrhage, as well as molecular and functional imaging biomarkers in cerebral amyloid angiopathy, cerebral small vessel disease and vascular cognitive impairment.

Office:

Alex Andre, PhD – Director of Operations

Email: office@caaforum.org