Hop On A Cure, a leading advocate in the fight against ALS, announced a financial contribution to ALS CURE Project. The contribution will specifically be used for the organization’s 3ML Project, which was created to develop a multi-modal longitudinal ML/statistical model that analyzes ALS patients’ biometrics differences longitudinally and correlates them with objective functional measures of decline such as speech and movement which can be recorded at the patient’s home using off-the-shelf devices.
ALS CURE Project
Founded in 2019 by Mike Piscotty and Stephen Piscotty in honor of Gretchen Piscotty, ALS CURE Project was established to fund research to identify the ALS disease mechanism. The first step is identifying progression, diagnostic, and prognostic ALS biomarkers. Identifying the diagnostic biomarker will help develop a diagnostic test that will promptly and accurately diagnose patients with ALS so they can begin treatment immediately.
Working Toward a Cure
“We’re on the clock when it comes to finding a cure for ALS. Everyone in the field is desperate to find biomarkers of this disease. Mike and his team are studying novel ways to look at biometrics and find measurable correlations so we can catch the disease earlier and objectively gauge where a person is in their disease journey,” says Hop On A Cure VP of Community Investments David Hopkins. “The ALS CURE Project is doing really important work, and we’re honored to in some way contribute to the progression of that work.”
Further Reading: Hop on a Cure Donates to Mass General ALS Research
“We are honored and grateful to receive this funding to support this novel 3ML international project which will collect MRI’s and blood plasma samples from patients during 3 ALS clinical visits in the US and Canada. Patients will capture weekly speech recordings at home during the study,” says Mike Piscotty, president of the all-volunteer ALS CURE Project charity. “ALS is a progressive disease and the novelty of the 3ML project approach is utilizing a machine learning model to longitudinally (over time) analyze three types of MRIs and blood plasma-derived proteomics correlated with speech analysis (ALS dialect) to represent the patient’s functional rate of decline during the study.
“The hope is to gain insight into the ALS disease mechanism, which progressively kills motor neurons, by analyzing brain images and the body’s chemistry longitudinally. The HOAC contribution will be used to run mass spectrometer analyses generating the protein composition data from the patient’s blood plasma samples to feed the 3ML model. The 3ML approach is both ambitious and innovative reflecting the urgency and laser focus of the ALS CURE Project and the Hop On A Cure’s goal to make impactful contributions towards finding a cure for ALS.”
About Hop On A Cure Foundation
Hop On A Cure was founded in 2022 by John Driskell Hopkins (Hop), and his wife Jennifer, following his diagnosis with ALS (commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease) in 2021. Hopkins is a multi-Grammy Award-winning founding member and songwriter of Zac Brown Band. With this rare platform in mind, Hop On A Cure was established to increase ALS awareness and to raise funds to enable new research to find ways to treat this disease, which currently has no known cure.
For more information about Hop On A Cure, visit www.hoponacure.org.
Featured image: Hop On A Cure
