Myolex Awarded NIH Grant of up to $2.2M to Advance a Valuable Proxy for MRI in Assessing Skeletal Muscle Health

Startup secures funding to verify that its EIM technology can become a comprehensive, rapid, low cost, and @home alternative to MRI in measuring muscle condition

BROOKLINE, Mass., Aug. 27, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Myolex, Inc. (https://www.myolex.com/), a company building a new standard to measure muscle wasting and the impact of its treatment, announced it has been awarded a grant of up to $2.2M from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This direct- to-Phase 2 SBIR grant will enable Myolex to further establish its electrical impendence myography (EIM) technology as a valuable alternative to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the assessment and management of muscle diseases. (https://www.myolex.com/technology/)

MRI is increasingly being used to assess skeletal muscle condition in multiple neuromuscular disorders and has become a preferred assessment tool in measuring sarcopenia (age-related muscle wasting). MRI is superb at quantifying elements of muscle composition, including myofiber size, muscle fat deposition, and the presence of edema or inflammation.

However, MRI also has major drawbacks as it is expensive, generally obtained only infrequently during the course of an illness or therapy, essentially unportable, requires skilled technicians to carry out muscle scans and skilled researchers for their interpretation, and can be stressful for some patients. Studies have shown that Myolex's EIM technology strongly correlates with muscle pathology revealed by MRI but with greater convenience, lower cost, simplified analysis, and with the potential for in-home patient assessment.

Working in conjunction with other clinical research physicians, in this new study, Myolex will collect MRI and EIM data on a cohort of healthy subjects and patients with primary myopathic conditions of varying severity. This NIH grant will also enable development of predictive algorithms that will leverage EIM values to predict MRI findings, further validating EIM's value as an MRI alternative in assessing muscle health.

"We hypothesize that EIM's comprehensive muscle composition information has the potential to serve as a proxy for MRI and therefore as a powerful future biomarker. Myolex EIM provides much of the same information as MRI but with far greater speed, convenience, lower cost, and greater flexibility and tolerability, without the need for cumbersome image analysis," says Myolex CEO Dave Dickinson. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpdickinson/) "In those cases where MRI is still indicated, the preliminary EIM measurements could also help focus the MRI scans and make the MRI process more efficient."

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R44AR083316-01A1 (https://reporter.nih.gov/search/zLouOfvkOkSQgJFebPpH4w/project- details/10921274#similar-Projects). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

About Myolex®
Myolex has developed the first quantitative, sensitive, painless, portable for in-home use, muscle quality assessment device that is specifically designed to non-invasively and comprehensively detect and track single muscle wasting that can result from aging, disease, obesity drug weight loss, and sport or work-related injury. Myolex mScan® is currently available for use within clinical research trials, subject to IRB-approval.

SOURCE Myolex, Inc