Benzinga | Dec 23, 2020 09:04AM EST

ENDRA Life Sciences Reports Issued Chinese Patent For Its TAEUS Platform Technology To Calculate Fat Concentration In Tissue

ENDRA Life Sciences Inc. (ENDRA) (NASDAQ:NDRA), a pioneer of Thermo Acoustic Enhanced UltraSound (TAEUS(r)), has recently been issued Chinese Patent ZL 2018 8 00500526 (the '526 patent) entitled "Method and System for Estimating Fractional Fat Content of an Object" from the Chinese Intellectual Property Office (SIPO).

This is the eighth Chinese patent issued to ENDRA for its TAEUS technology. ENDRA's intellectual property (IP) portfolio currently stands at 78 assets, including those in preparation, filed, issued and licensed.

"The '526 patent strengthens IP protection for our proprietary approach to assessing fat content in tissue. Our TAEUS system provides a non-invasive assessment of liver fat, which is particularly important in China where an estimated 30% of its 1.4 billion citizens are affected by Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)," said Francois Michelon, ENDRA's chief executive officer.

"NAFLD can progress to Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH), fibrosis, cirrhosis and even cancer. The TAEUS technology is designed to assess NAFLD it its earliest stages, when it is still reversible," he added. "TAEUS represents a cost-effective and non-invasive alternative to the only two diagnostic tools for NAFLD available today, namely expensive MRIs and invasive surgical biopsies. In addition, TAEUS is practical as it is used with conventional ultrasound equipment that is broadly available at the point of patient care."

The '526 patent covers a system and method for calculating fat concentration in the human body with a single thermoacoustic measurement. The TAEUS system and method utilize ultrasound imaging to target a volume of tissue and then obtain thermoacoustic measurements of tissue composition. The parent application for Chinese Patent ZL 2018 8 00500526 has also issued in the United States as U.S. Patent Number 9,888,879.