LINKÖPING, Sweden, April 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, AMRA Medical announced an expansion of its dataset, resulting from a collaboration with Pfizer Inc. and UK Biobank, from 10,000 to 25,000 UK Biobank participants – another step toward their shared goal of analyzing the body composition of 100,000 individuals. These data could aid scientific and clinical researchers in further investigations within a wide range of complex diseases, as well as overall metabolic health.

In 2020, AMRA renewed its partnership with Pfizer to assemble 100,000 composition profiles – making it, when completed, potentially the world's largest detailed study of its kind. The partnership underscores AMRA's and Pfizer's commitment to advancing science to improve the lives of patients affected by diseases rooted in metabolic dysregulation.

This expansion involved generating extensive data using AMRA's rapid and highly standardized imaging protocol for body composition profiling, providing norms for several metabolic conditions – such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), obesity, and diabetes – that can potentially serve as a reference in future clinical trials and clinical practice. Additionally, the high-quality imaging outputs, linked with the existing extensive genetic and phenotypic data from UK Biobank – including disease status, outcome data, and biomarker data ­– will enable new discoveries and insights.

AMRA researchers also collected and validated new measurements for liver fat values and muscle fat infiltration in separate thigh muscle volumes, segmented into the left, right, anterior, and posterior regions, compared to previous measurements that included only the average muscle fat infiltration. These new measurements enable more detailed investigations in metabolic research and around muscle-related disease.

"This is potentially the largest imaging dataset with liver proton density fat fraction associated with detailed characteristics and genetics of the participants, offering the potential to improve scientific and clinical understanding of several increasingly prevalent complex metabolic diseases. We hope this expansive, high-quality dataset will help identify and validate new therapeutic targets that can advance life-changing drugs," said Jennifer Linge, Lead Scientist for Precision Medicine at AMRA Medical.

"We are thrilled by the continued expansion of this critical dataset, which we hope will provide further insight into the factors driving the metabolic diseases that impact millions of patients around the world," added Morris Birnbaum, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer for the Internal Medicine Research Unit at Pfizer. "This work with AMRA and UK Biobank continues to exemplify the role that strong collaborations play in advancing scientific understanding."

For information on AMRA's data within UK Biobank, please visit: http://biobank.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/crystal/label.cgi?id=149

For information on how to apply for UK Biobank access, please visit: https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/enable-your-research


About AMRA Medical
AMRA is a digital health company at the forefront of medical imaging and precision medicine. The company has developed a new global standard in body composition assessment, the ability to automatically produce multiple fat and muscle biomarkers with unrivaled precision and accuracy, as well as contextual disease insights – all from a single, rapid, whole-body MRI.


About UK Biobank
UK Biobank is a large-scale biomedical database and research resource containing genetic, lifestyle and health information from half a million UK participants.

UK Biobank's database, which includes blood samples, heart and brain scans and genetic data of the 500,000 volunteer participants, is globally accessible to approved researchers who are undertaking health-related research that's in the public interest.

UK Biobank recruited 500,000 people aged between 40-69 years in 2006-2010 from across the UK. With their consent, they provided detailed information about their lifestyle, physical measures and had blood, urine and saliva sample collected and stored for future analysis.

UK Biobank's research resource is a major contributor in the advancement of modern medicine and treatment, enabling better understanding of the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of serious and life-threatening illnesses – including cancer, heart diseases and stroke.

UK Biobank is generously supported by its founding funders the Wellcome Trust and UK Medical Research Council, as well as the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Department of Health, Northwest Regional Development Agency and Scottish Government. The organisation has over 150 dedicated members of staff, based in multiple locations across the UK.


SOURCE AMRA Medical