An international team of investigators led by experts at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has been awarded a nearly $3 million, five-year grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) to establish diagnostic criteria for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

The Penn-led team will search for common pathological changes in the post-mortem brains of over 200 patients with a history of traumatic brain injury and for comparison, over 1,500 postmortem brains from patients with other neurodegenerative diseases who were followed over time as part of other NIH funded grants at Penn. Research activities will include identifying proteins that show evidence of neurodegenerative damage; documenting gross anatomical changes such as brain atrophy; and uncovering underlying biochemical and genetic alterations.

Among the researchers are Department members Drs. John Q. Trojanowski, Virginia Man-Yee Lee, Edward Lee, and Vivianna Van Deerlin.
Read the Department of Communications news release.