Embic Corporation Quantifies Amyloid Load with Digital Cognitive Biomarkers

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., Oct. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Embic Corporation, a leading developer of digital cognitive biomarkers, has secured grant funding from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) (Grant#: R43AG074769) to further validate their approach for identifying individuals who are accumulating abnormal levels of amyloid protein. Identifying such individuals through this inexpensive and non-invasive approach will significantly accelerate research into new treatments for Alzheimer's disease while enabling timely intervention and better treatment outcomes for patients in the disease's earliest stages.

In a preliminary study, Embic's digital cognitive biomarkers, which are generated from standardized neuropsychological assessment data, identified subjects who were both "cognitively normal" and "amyloid positive" with 88% - 90% accuracy. This NIA grant will underwrite an additional study to validate the preliminary results using publicly available data collected by the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI). The successful replication and validation of the earlier results will confirm further utility of Embic's digital cognitive biomarkers, and establish a pragmatic and cost-effective approach for identifying persons with accumulating Alzheimer's disease pathology.

Commenting on the grant, Embic CEO, Dennis Fortier, said, "A key challenge in developing new Alzheimer's therapies is identifying subjects with both minimal cognitive deficits and levels of amyloid consistent with early-stage disease. The current approach of performing expensive and invasive PET scans on potential trial candidates, has a scan failure rate as high as 80% and adds undue time and expense to the research process. A brief test that pragmatically identifies candidates who are likely to have an amyloid-positive PET scan could identify a much larger pool of potential research subjects while significantly reducing the screen-fail rate in the enrollment process. This could ultimately bring new treatments to market sooner."

About Embic Corporation: Embic Corporation (www.embic.us) is a data analytics company that develops digital biomarkers for characterizing human cognition and brain health. The company's intellectual property includes multiple patents in the cognitive health field, a registry of individuals monitoring their brain health, and a proprietary dataset of two million cognitive assessments that facilitates ongoing R&D efforts. 

SOURCE Embic Corporation