Speech could be a key clinical marker in neurodegenerative disease drug trials, says leading biotech

SynaptixBio, the only company licensed to commercialise a treatment for the rare, deadly disease H-ABC, says families value the ability to communicate more than other disease impacts

Speech is rapidly emerging as an important, non-invasive, digital clinical marker in neurodegenerative disease research, according to leading biotech SynaptixBio.

The company has facilitated a study run by Australia-based speech analytics company Redenlab, in partnership with The Translational Centre for Speech Disorders at Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, that will assess the value of speech as a clinical marker to indicate brain health.

The study is specific to H-ABC and will consider all communication styles, including the use of sign language, gestures, devices, or other systems.

The research team is currently seeking to recruit patients aged 6 months to adulthood from all over the world.

Uwe Meya, Chief Medical Officer at SynaptixBio, said; “We are delighted to see this study get underway and keen to leverage Redenlab’s expertise in speech analysis for rare diseases to support our clinical research programme.”

Meya noted the importance of speech to the families of those living with a patient affected by a neurodegenerative disease such as H-ABC. He said; “The ability to communicate is often more important to patients and their families than other motor skills, and this is often underestimated by regulators.

“Despite the current lack of regulatory acceptance we will use speech metrics as exploratory parameters in our intended clinical trials to inform our decision-making and support their validation for regulatory recognition.

“Speech parameters may be powerful tools for detecting early treatment effects prior to established clinical rating scales.”

SynaptixBio has no active role in the study itself, but has facilitated contact with patients and patient advocacy groups in the UK and US.

The relationship will be directly between The University of Melbourne, Redenlab and the patients.

SynaptixBio last year chose its lead candidate drug, an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO), for taking forward into clinical trials; ASOs are a form of gene silencing technology, they stop mutated genes forming toxic proteins. Critically, they don’t alter the gene itself.

Dr Adam Vogel is Chief Science Officer at Redenlab, which is a recognised global leader in communication testing for industry-run clinical trials, and is also Professor of Speech Neuroscience at The University of Melbourne, Australia. He commented; “Speech analytics provides insights that serve as a powerful decision support tool.

“They can outperform subjective, manual clinician ratings which can be unreliable and/or insensitive.”

Vogel continued; “Speech is a powerful digital clinical marker that provides insight into brain health. It can be analysed using advanced tools like AI to extract objective metrics, such as intelligibility, pause length, pitch, articulation, and lexical diversity.”

Family participation helps researchers better understand speech and language in H-ABC, supporting improved assessments, targeted therapies, and future clinical trials.

The study is fully online and available in multiple languages, making participation easy from anywhere in the world.

To find out more about SynaptixBio please visit https://www.synaptixbio.com/.