2026 Research Grant Spotlight

The Brain Aneurysm Foundation is proud to support groundbreaking research aimed at improving outcomes for patients and ultimately preventing ruptures. Each week, we’ll highlight one of our 2026 funded researchers and provide a brief overview of their project and its potential impact on patients, families, and the future of care.

Redi Rahmani, MD

University of Louisville Research Foundation, Inc.

The Role of Cigarette and Electronic Cigarette Aerosols and Constituents on Intracranial Aneurysm Formation and Rupture

This project’s goal is to determine how cigarette smoking, vaping, and newer “tobacco-free” nicotine products can affect the development and rupture of brain aneurysms. By combining a novel inhalation ‘smoking’ model with the established mouse aneurysm formation model, we hope to understand how these products can damage blood vessels and increase aneurysm risk.

We hope our findings will provide the first-ever biological data on how vaping and synthetic nicotine products influence brain aneurysm formation and rupture. These results could help guide public health recommendations and policies, inform patients and healthcare providers about potential risks, and lay the foundation for future therapies and prevention strategies that reduce aneurysm-related strokes and deaths.

This project is funded by the Larry Bedell Chair of Research and the Falmouth Road Race Chair of Research