Hop on a Cure Makes Financial Contribution Toward ALS CURE Project

ATLANTA, July 9, 2024 (Newswire.com) - Hop On A Cure, a leading advocate in the fight against ALS, has announced today their financial contribution to ALS CURE Project - specifically toward the organization's 3ML Project, which was created to develop a multi-modal longitudinal ML/statistical model that analyzes ALS patient’s 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. 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.

“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,” said 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.” 

“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,” said 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 3 types of MRI’s 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.”

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. 

Source: Hop On A Cure