US-based ENDRA Life Sciences Inc. has received Institutional Review Board approval from China’s Shanghai General Hospital (Shanghai First People’s Hospital Affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University), for the first clinical study of ENDRA’s Thermo Acoustic Enhanced UltraSound (TAEUS) device to assess Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) in that market.

This is ENDRA’s first clinical research partnership in Asia and the eighth globally. The collaboration will contribute to the clinical evidence for the TAEUS ultrasound device in patients with NAFLD in China and will be a reference site to support commercialization of TAEUS in the world’s most populous market.

In anticipation of introducing the TAEUS platform to China, ENDRA has been building a robust intellectual property portfolio with eight patents issued to date in China. The study is expected to begin in 2022.

The goals of the study include comparing ENDRA’s TAEUS liver device against a baseline measure of liver fat as determined by the current standard-of-care MRI-PDFF (magnetic resonance imaging proton density fat fraction) in 75 patients. The study will also provide ENDRA with ongoing clinical feedback on product design and clinical performance.