Aural Analytics And Tgen Announce Als Research Collaboration

Aural Analytics, Inc., a privately-held digital health company focused on building the world’s most advanced speech analytics platform, and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), an affiliate of City of Hope and a non-profit organization dedicated to conducting groundbreaking research with life-changing results, today announced plans to collaborate on research in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

The TGen-sponsored clinical trial will assess recently-diagnosed ALS patients (<12 months) undergoing acupuncture treatment and will track blood-based biomarkers and vocal biomarkers (components of speech) associated with acupuncture treatment in study participants.

The speech samples will be collected via a mobile application developed by Aural Analytics to measure subtle speech changes in patients by tapping directly into various nervous system functions to track their progress and response to acupuncture treatment.

“Integrating the Aural Analytics platform technology to measure vocal biomarkers of the ALS clinical trial participants will generate data that will allow us to leverage the latest computational techniques in hopes of assessing ALS progression and treatment response,” said Dr. Winnie Liang, Associate Professor of TGen’s Neurogenomics Division.

Aural Analytics speech analytics platform technology will provide a series of objective outcome measures of speech production extracted from the clinical trial participant’s speech samples. The analysis will provide insight into key areas known to change with disease including, but not limited to, motor control and aspects of cognitive linguistics.

“This collaboration utilizes our platform’s ALS module and will provide study researchers a panel of objective, clinically-relevant measures of speech change. We will also provide an easy-to-use mobile application that allows patients to comply with study requirements from the comfort of their home, an especially important need for patients with this difficult neurological disease,” said Daniel Jones, co-founder and chief executive officer of Aural Analytics, Inc. “TGen is a world-renowned and highly regarded leader in independent research and we very much look forward to working with them on this study.”

ALS, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, slowly robs the body of its ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. The Aural Analytics mobile first, patient-centric platfom technology is easy-to-use, low-cost and analytics are available in real-time. Speech data will be collected non-invasively, in-home, every week through the app downloaded on participants’ personal phones or tablets, easing the significant burden on ALS patients and their caregivers for whom travel to clinical trial sites can be difficult.-Yahoo Finance