A three-year, $2.8 million grant has been awarded to the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Phoenix Children’s Hospital and Barrow Neurological Institute for a study that could lead to better treatments and understanding of the biology behind brain injury from hemorrhagic strokes.

Such strokes occur when blood accumulates after a blood vessel bursts in the brain, causing injury to the surrounding brain tissue and often leading to rare types of traumatic brain injuries. Researchers will try to identify extracellular RNAs suitable as biomarkers to indicate the severity of the stroke and risk of subsequent injury.

The grant is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences under its Extracellular RNA Communication program. Hemorrhagic stroke occurs annually in 10 to 15 people per 100,000, with risk increasing with age.