CleveMed Receives $1.5 Million in NIH Funding to Further Develop a Portable System for Monitoring Parkinson's Disease Motor Symptoms

Wednesday December 19, 2:22 pm ET
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/071219/clw067.html?.v=98

CLEVELAND, Dec. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Cleveland Medical Devices Inc. (CleveMed) announced that it has been awarded $1.5 million in NIH SBIR Phase II Continuation funding from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The grant will fund further development and clinical validation of Kinesia(TM), a quantitative motor assessment system for evaluating Parkinson's disease symptom severity. The initiative includes a large multi-center clinical trial with University Hospitals of Cleveland, the University of Cincinnati, and The Clinical Neuroscience Center in Detroit, Michigan as the participating centers. The trial will aid in development of Kinesia for continuous symptom monitoring in patients' homes, as well as further validate the correlation between the device and the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS).

Kinesia is a compact lightweight system worn on a patient's wrist and hand. The device monitors three-dimensional motion and electrical muscle activity (EMG) to objectively quantify the severity of Parkinson's disease symptoms, such as tremor, bradykinesia (slowed movements) and dyskinesias (wild, involuntary movements). Patients follow on screen video instruction while data is wirelessly transmitted to a computer to enhance user safety and comfort.

"Objective quantification of Parkinson's disease symptoms such as tremor, bradykinesia, and dyskinesias is important in light of new pharmaceutical trials and novel therapies such as deep brain stimulation," said Dr. Alberto Espay, Neurologist at the University of Cincinnati Movement Disorders Center. "The technology should prove useful for quantifying symptoms in-clinic and tracking symptom fluctuation patterns at patients' homes to more effectively modulate treatments, ultimately improving quality of life for individuals with Parkinson's disease."

A previous clinical study involving 60 Parkinson's patients showed good correlation between Kinesia and the UPDRS. The UPDRS, a subjective assessment scale, is the current standard in rating Parkinson's symptom severity. "Kinesia is being developed as a standardized platform to measure motor symptoms and meets the clinical need for quantifying and tracking symptoms more objectively," said Joseph P. Giuffrida, PhD, Director of CleveMed's Division of Movement Disorders. "Using Kinesia with the UPDRS will give clinicians detailed information for basing treatment options, such as medication dosage and timing." This funding will be used to upgrade the system for home use, further validate correlations between Kinesia and the UPDRS and demonstrate efficacy of home monitoring over longer periods of time, such as days, weeks or months, instead of just the snapshot that clinicians see in a typical office exam.

About CleveMed - CleveMed was founded with the goal of developing innovative telemetry devices for a variety of medical applications. Today, CleveMed is developing and pioneering the use of novel wireless monitoring systems for high growth neurology and rehabilitation applications, including brain monitoring, sleep disorders and movement disorders. Through these

innovations, CleveMed has developed a growing range of products that address the needs of the medical, research and academic communities.