Cognition Therapeutics Inc. has received a $3.3 million grant from the National Institute of Aging to conduct a clinical trial on Alzheimer's disease.

The Pittsburgh-based clinical stage neuroscience company has been working on the protection and restoration of synaptic function in Alzheimer's patients.

According to a release, the company will use the grant money to conduct a clinical trial in which quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) will be used to measure changes in synaptic activity in Alzheimer's patients who have been treated with Cognition's Elayta drug.

The study is expected to start in the second half of 2019, and will be conducted by Philip Scheltens, professor of cognitive neurology at Amsterdam University Medical Centers and director of the Alzheimer Center Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

Elayta is also being studied in three Phase 2 clinical studies, which are supported by $23.2 million from the NIA.

"The identification of noninvasive biomarkers to assess Alzheimer's disease treatments is crucial to the continued advancement of clinical research and medical care," said Cognition President and CEO Kenneth Moch. "We are grateful to the NIA for their continued support in helping to advance our understanding — and the understanding of the entire health care community — of the potential that qEEG holds in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and the measurement of therapeutic impact."