First published: 8th March 2024

Data presented at the 2024 Alzheimer's & Parkinson's Diseases (AD/PD) Conference provides validation of two novel assessments in the Cumulus Neuroscience platform, suitable for at-home use by patients, in terms of sensitivity to change in cognitive impairment.

“We are excited to share technical validation data for two novel cognitive tasks from a pair of parallel studies. These demonstrated that the tasks are patient-friendly, can be used autonomously to capture high quality data at home and are sensitive to cognitive impairment, making them suitable for use in clinical trials where precision measurement at the individual subject level is a must,” said Brian Murphy, PhD, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cumulus. “These validated tasks have the potential to enable earlier detection of disease and provide biopharma with longitudinal real-world data that can streamline clinical trial designs.”

Titled “Technical and Clinical Validation of Novel Cognitive Tests for Remote Sampling of Memory and Executive Function,” the poster features data demonstrating that the Cumulus Neuroassessment platform’s “Symbol Swap” (a symbol-coding task, related to the classic DSST) and “Memory Match” (a visual associative learning paradigm, designed to test recollection memory) can be frequently and accurately used by patients living with mild to moderate AD to measure for cognitive impairment.

In the parallel studies, Symbol Swap and Memory Match underwent technical validation in an alcohol challenge lab study (n=30), assessing sensitivity to subtle sedation and cognitive impairment, and were also deployed in a longitudinal field study of people living with mild AD dementia (n=59) and matched healthy control participants (n=60). In the patient study, both tasks strongly differentiated AD status with equivalent or greater sensitivity than the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive subscale (ADAS-Cog), which is the standard primary outcome neuropsychological measure for AD trials.

“We need to find new ways to catch Alzheimer's disease earlier, and we need a paradigm shift overall in the diagnosis, treatment and care of the condition,” said Aman Bhatti, MD, CEO, Cumulus. “These data demonstrate a promising and exciting step toward that goal, by validating two novel cognitive tasks that are easy for patients to use and sensitive to impairment. These tasks, as part of the Cumulus Neuroassessment Platform, are ideal for modern clinical trials requiring individual-level precision measurement, and our hope is that this important technology will help researchers to better understand disease progression and early symptoms of AD, so that we can improve diagnosis and treatment for the millions of individuals and families impacted.”