studyan AI-enabled company that creates digital twins for clinical trial participants, has announced a partnership to advance ALS research using Trace Neuroscience, a biotechnology company that creates genomic therapies for neurodegenerative diseases.
Founded in 2017, Ullearn uses machine learning to create digital twins for clinical trial participants before being randomized in controlled trials.
Digital Twins can provide researchers with insight into participants’ health outcomes. The company will pitch the technology as a way to run smaller clinical trials more quickly, as researchers have fewer participants in the control group.
Additionally, Illearn offers a Digital Twin Generator (DTG) for ALS. It provides a machine learning model that trains over 13,000 longitudinal clinical records from the Proact database of the ALS-centric digital research platform APST, ALS Research and the Northeast ALS Consortium (NEALS).
Digital Twin Generators predict how individuals will progress in standard care or placebo groups in clinical trials, and create “digital twins” for each trial participants based on the data.
Trace Neuroscience uses Illern’s DTG ALS and its Ullearn platform for phase 1/2 clinical trials from biotechnology companies targeting UNC13A protein, a genetic target directly related to ALS progression.
Illern provision is used to simulate ALS disease progression and to assess long-term relationships between clinical endpoints, disease status at baseline, and biomarkers.
Trace also uses Illarn’s platform to inform decisions on clinical trial protocols.
“This collaboration brings together two powerful approaches – AI and genomic medicine to rethink how we design our ALS trials,” Dr. Eric Green, co-founder and CEO of Trace Neuroscience, said in a statement.
“Working with Illern to minify large, well-curious databases using ALS DTG, we can explore smarter designs and make confident and informed decisions when planning phase 1/2 trials. Ultimately, these insights will help us move faster for those living with ALS awaiting new treatment options.”
Bigger trends
Last year, Irean was secured Series C funding is $50 million, with a total increase of more than $130 million.
In 2022, the company scored Two years after winning $15 million in Series A funding, it’s $50 million in Series B funding.
In December, Irrearn partnered with Germany-based APST Research (APST) to integrate data from more than 8,000 participants in the APST longitudinal study into DTG ALS. The dataset includes clinical data, biomarker analysis, general ALS clinical assessments, and patient self-assessment.
Last year, Ullearn announced its partnership with Biotechnology Company Projenx. It uses Illern’s DTG ALS to produce digital twins for clinical trial participants living with ALS.
Digital twins will serve as placebos for participants receiving procetin, a brain polarizer MAP4 kinase inhibitor, in a Phase 1 clinical trial of Projects.
In 2023, Ulrearn announced a partnership with clinical stage biotechnology company Qualis Corporation to speed up Qurals ALS-centric clinical program using Irrearn’s Genai Technology.
Other companies using digital twin technology include startups in Singapore Mesh Bio can help manage elevated cases of chronic disease, particularly in Southeast Asia, using digital twins.
Twin HealthDigital Metabolic Care Company offers a whole body digital twin, an AI-assisted model aimed at providing personalized nutrition, sleep and activity guidance to prevent and reverse metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes.
