(Calgary, Alberta) Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions has awarded $43 million in funding support to 37 outstanding health researchers across Alberta. These awards, 34 of which are seven years in length, are among the richest health research awards in Canada.

"We have such a diverse and talented community of scientists, physicians, and population health researchers throughout Alberta. I want to recognize and thank all of the applicants for their substantial efforts," says Alberta Innovates Health Solutions CEO Jacques Magnan, PhD. "My sincere congratulations go out to the researchers at the universities of Calgary and Alberta who were awarded funding to support their exceptional work."

Dr. Eric Smith, is one of 18 researchers at the University of Calgary who was successful in the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research's 2009 independent investigator competition, which included 130 applications. The Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research now Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions.

Funding support at the University of Calgary is being awarded to researchers in the faculties of engineering, medicine, science, and veterinary medicine.

An assistant professor of clinical neurosciences in UCalgary's Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Smith is a new clinical investigator who studies what happens in the brain as people get older.

"Our goal is to prevent dementia - a major public health problem, and devastating for those afflicted and their families," says Dr. Smith, a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute. "We are using MRI to identify whether a lack of blood flow in the brain puts people at greater risk for silent strokes. Those covert strokes accumulate over time, and increase the risk of major strokes, and dementia."

Dr. Smith's team is working with colleagues at Harvard Medical School to look closely at small blood vessels in the brain using MRI, and PET scanning technologies. The Calgary team is recruiting 66 people in southern Alberta while Harvard's research team is enrolling 124 volunteers in Boston. The researchers here will ask study volunteers to do verbal and written memory and thinking tests, as well as an MRI of their brain.

"Ultimately, this research will help us identify the early warning signs of covert strokes, and dementia so that we can stop the process of brain damage before seeing disabling symptoms that profoundly change people's lives - loss of memory, language and problem solving," says Dr. Smith.

There are 500,000 Canadians currently living with dementia. A study commissioned by the Alzheimer's Society of Canada reports that in 2008, the total economic burden of dementia in Canada (including direct health costs and lost wages of caregivers) was $15 billion. Dementia is defined as disorders of the brain in which thinking and memory progressively deteriorate.

Dr. Smith's clinical research is funded by Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the Canadian Stroke Network, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Since 1980, the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (now Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions) has committed more than $1.2 billion to researchers at Athabasca University, the University of Alberta, the University of Calgary, and the University of Lethbridge.

For more information about this research, please contact Mina Jama,
Calgary Stroke Program, 403.944.1594,

Media contact Karen Thomas, Media Specialist, AIberta Innovates - Health
Solutions, 1.877.423.5727 x225, 403.651.1112 (cell),