NeuraLight's Eye-Tracking Biomarker Outperforms MDS-UPDRS III in Detecting Parkinson's Disease Progression
核心洞察
NeuraLight's ASH biomarker, measuring saccadic hypometria via eye movements, detected significant Parkinson's progression across two independent cohorts (P < 0.0001).
The gold-standard MDS-UPDRS III clinical scale, scored by clinicians at the same sites over the same period, failed to reach statistical significance.
The study was co-authored by Prof. Goetz and Prof. Rascol, two developers of the MDS-UPDRS scale itself, lending exceptional credibility to the findings.
A new study published in Pharmaceutical Medicine has demonstrated that NeuraLight's eye-tracking-based biomarker can detect Parkinson's disease (搜索) progression with greater sensitivity than the field's own gold-standard clinical assessment tool—and the finding comes from a research team that includes the very developers of that standard.
The biomarker, known as ASH (Amplitude of Saccadic Hypometria) (搜索), quantifies how accurately the eyes reach visual targets, providing a direct functional readout of basal ganglia circuitry—the central driver of Parkinsonian motor symptoms. Across two independent cohorts, ASH showed significant deterioration in Parkinson's disease (搜索) patients (P-value < 0.0001), with findings that were highly consistent across sites, demonstrating strong reproducibility.
In striking contrast, the MDS-UPDRS III—the Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson's Disease (搜索) Rating Scale Part III, scored by clinicians at the same sites over the same period—did not reach statistical significance.
A Study Led by the Scale's Own Architects
The paper, titled "Changes in saccadic hypometria over time to monitor Parkinson's disease (搜索) progression," carries unusual weight due to its authorship. Prof. Olivier Rascol, who led the trial, and Prof. Christopher Goetz are two of the developers of the MDS-UPDRS clinical scale itself. Their participation signals a recognition within the field that even well-validated clinical rating scales have inherent limitations in sensitivity and reproducibility.
"NeuraLight's biomarkers have been successfully incorporated into a number of Parkinson's drug trials, where they demonstrated the ability to detect subtle changes that are generally undetectable when using clinical gold standards," said Prof. Rascol.
Addressing a Critical Barrier in Drug Development
No treatment has been approved to slow Parkinson's disease (搜索) progression, and the difficulty of measuring progression reliably enough to detect a real drug effect has been one of the field's most persistent challenges. The new findings suggest that objective, digitally captured biomarkers may offer a path forward.
"Longitudinal progression can be captured with the consistency and reproducibility that disease-modifying trials require," said Edmund Ben-Ami, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NeuraLight. "Our vision is a future where every CNS trial can detect what's happening to patients, and where therapies that work reach them faster."
By generating objective and reproducible measures of brain function, NeuraLight's biomarkers have the potential to improve sensitivity to longitudinal change, enabling more efficient clinical trials and increasing confidence in the detection of treatment effects. The technology has already been embedded in multiple commercial partnerships and is endorsed by leading neurologists and major research foundations.
The trials supporting this work were registered at ClinicalTrials.gov under identifiers NCT05795023 and NCT05862649.