This pressure, also known as idiopathic intracranial hypertension,  is caused by a buildup of blood and cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, when it fails to move properly through the veins that act as a drainage system in the head. 

And while treatment for PTC has always been spotty, an Israeli startup has developed a device that can expand the veins in the brain, releasing the fluid and easing the pressure – and the symptoms. 

These symptoms are severe and potentially life altering, including eventual blindness, and it is not clear why some people suffer from the disease, although it is more commonly found in young women and people who are overweight.

Vflow co-founder and CMO Anat Horev, who is also head of the Interventional Neuroradiology Unit at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, says that PTC was recognized 50 years ago, but it is only in the past few years that the extent of the problem has become truly understood. 

“They have a narrowing in the draining veins of the brain,” Horev tells NoCamels. “Therefore there is a horrible feeling of pressure in the head, noise in the ears or pressure in the eyes that actually can limit eyesight.” 

And the condition, she says, is more common than previously believed.  

Imagine, Horev says, that about 50 percent of patients with excruciating unresponsive migraines have a narrowing in the veins and are not being treated accordingly. Instead, they are going from one physician to another, without any real answers and as a result are becoming a burden on the system.

“We’re talking about millions of patients,” she says. “They’re not functioning, they’re not studying, they’re not working.” 

According to Horev, excess weight does play a major part in exacerbating the symptoms of the disease, as it places a greater strain on the neck and chest.  And as more and more people are recognized as overweight, there is a fair chance that  issue will only become increasingly common. 

A study released in March by renowned medical journal The Lancet found that in 2022, more than one billion people worldwide were living with obesity, including 43 percent of adults. 

As such, Horev explains, improving the drainage capabilities in the brain would have a major impact on the health of millions of people. 

“A very large group of scientists and physicians believe that this is the next thing in improving the quality of life of patients,” she says. 

Flexible Solution 

The startup’s unique vascular stent, called Viva Stent, is placed in the vein in the brain, directly where it narrows.   

“It’s always in the same place [in the brain],” Horev states. “We are not sure why.”  

Once the stent is put in place, the patient’s quality of life improves almost at once, with the debilitating symptoms clearing up, she says, adding that many of those suffering from PTC have taken multiple different medications with no results.  

“I enjoy performing the procedure, which is low risk, with the patient waking up with immediate symptoms relief,” Horev says.

The entire procedure, from start to finish, takes about one hour. 

While there have been previous attempts to use a stent to expand the veins in order to increase the drainage, Horev explains this has always been problematic due to the rigidity of the equipment being used. 

There was no device designed specifically for this procedure, she says. Instead a “very short and stiff” off-label stent – developed to deal with a clogged carotid artery – was used. This stent, however, could not adequately contend with what Horev says is the “very sharp curve” on the journey to reach the brain. 

Vflow’s Viva Stent, however, is “20 percent less rigid” and with its catheter delivery mechanism flexible enough to navigate through this turn. What is more, Horev says, the stent itself is kept at the back of the catheter during its passage from the groin, where it enters, to the placement site in the vein inside the brain. 

She explains that this allows for even greater maneuverability during the procedure. Only when the catheter has navigated the sharp turn is the stent brought forwards and maneuvered into place. 

“When the stent is at the back, you can take any turn you like, even a full turn,” Horev says. “Only when we are ready and we crossed the turn is the right time to push [it] forward.” 

The stent can also be moved back and forth as it is maneuvered into place, making it even easier to ensure it reaches precisely the right spot, she adds. 

Horev founded Vflow in 2021 with its CEO Dr. Bilha Cahana, an experienced entrepreneur with several successful companies already under her belt. The pair have spent the past three years fine-tuning the stent and are now preparing for human trials in Israel. 

Once the trial has been completed in Israel, the company plans to conduct a further study in the United States, in order to obtain approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

And while there are a few other companies working on a stent for the same purpose, Horev says none are yet on the market.

Furthermore, she says, besides, the stent designed with features specifically for this disease, Vlfow’s device offers a unique delivery system that allows for safe and swift trackability and deployment.

For the past three years, the company has had ongoing investment from the Israel Innovation Authority, the branch of the government dedicated to promoting the national tech sector, as well as personal funding from Cahana. 

Various small companies working in the field of medical devices have also invested, but now Vflow is looking for a major investment to see the startup through to the end of the clinical trials. 

The company was also a recent finalist in a contest for startups held by Be’er Sheva innovation hub Synergy7 and the Merage Israel Foundation. The two institutions share a mission of promoting technology native to the Negev, and designed the competition to help promising local startups in the sectors of healthcare, cybersecurity and robotics.

And helping to reassure prospective patients is a video created by a filmmaker who has successfully undergone the procedure with Horev. 

“It’s very reassuring to see what you’re going into,” she says. 

“She did it because she says that it changed her life. She was miserable until then.” 

The post Supple Stent Aims To Help Sufferers Of Painful Brain Pressure appeared first on NoCamels.

But one side effect of targeted therapy – a prominent facial rash that resembles acne – has caused such an adverse impact that it is even deterring some patients from continuing their planned treatment regimen. 

And this is an issue that Israeli startup EMRIS Pharma has tackled with a new carefully formulated ointment that patients apply onto their skin. 

According to the American Cancer Society, a rash is the most common side effect of targeted therapies – its occurrence and severity is dependent on the type and the dose of the treatment. This rash, which resembles acne, usually appears on the face and in some cases other normally visible areas such as the neck, scalp and upper back.  

And while the rash subsides once the treatment has been completed, it is so traumatic for some patients that they stop venturing into public or either reduce the frequency of their treatment regime or halt it altogether. 

Dr. Sharon Merims, EMRIS CSO and co-founder, tells NoCamels that around 90 percent of patients receiving targeted therapies have some kind of skin toxicity. 

Merims is a dermatologist who heads the Dermato-Oncology and skin toxicity clinic at the Sharett Institute of Oncology at Hadassah University Hospital-Ein Kerem in Jerusalem. 

“The profile of the skin rash is very troublesome because it involves the face,” Merims says. 

“[Patients] have a very unique facial rash, which is a very big problem for the quality of life. You can understand, once it’s on your face, you can’t really have a normal day to day.” 

Merims began working on a solution eight years ago along with EMRIS co-founder and CTO Prof. Ofra Benny, a specialist in drug delivery systems at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The two mulled the possibilities of a topical solution to this issue – a cause of anguish for people already dealing with the implications of a cancer diagnosis. 

What they were contemplating, she explains, was a targeted therapy to manage the side effects of a targeted therapy.

“I started thinking about an idea,” she says. “What if we can produce a blocking agent that we would apply topically, only on the skin, that would block the cancer drug from connecting to the receptor only at the toxicity site.” 

During their research into the possibility of treating this rash locally, the two found the “potent lead molecule” that forms the basis of the EMRIS ointment that does – as Merims hoped – prevent the targeted therapy from affecting the skin cells. 

The targeted cancer therapy itself is based on a substance that is an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor. This substance blocks the activity of the EGFR, which is related to cell growth and is found in many cells. By blocking EGFR, the treatment aims to prevent the cancer cells from growing, but also causes the skin side effect as the EGFR inhibitor attaches to EGFR on normal skin cells. 

The company itself was set up in 2023 along with its third co-founder, Dr. Lyora Aharonov, an expert in biological research with a wealth of experience in R&D management. Funding came from the Israel Innovation Authority, the branch of the government dedicated to advancing the nation’s high-tech sector at home and on the international stage. 

The startup also received assistance from Yissum, the Hebrew University’s technology transfer company, which helped license EMRIS.

The EMRIS ointment, Aharonov tells NoCamels, blocks the EGFR inhibitor from binding to the skin cells and prevents the rash from developing, leaving the skin cells healthy and functioning normally.

“The key advantage of our treatment is its targeted action,” she says. “This is a real game changer for the patient.” 

What makes this drug so unique, Merims explains, is that it is the only solution for the rash that deals with the root of the problem – preventing it, rather than merely trying to mitigate the symptoms. 

“The accepted treatment today is avoiding the sun, putting on emollients and topical steroids with a regimen of antibiotics for two months” she says. 

“That’s the protocol every patient is getting around the world. That’s the treatment for skin toxicity.” 

Within the past year, Aharonov says, the company has very quickly reached  “significant milestones,” primarily the formulation of the topical ointment that can specifically reach the necessary layer of the skin. 

The formulated ointment has already undergone animal testing, with “very positive results for safety,” according to Aharonov. 

Human trials are due to begin at Hadassah in early 2026. After that, the startup also plans to hold clinical trials in the United States, a necessary step for receiving approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. 

The  ointment is primarily designed for patients undergoing targeted therapy for advanced colon and  head and neck cancers. 

The priority, the company says, is keeping patients on their course of treatment for their cancer while improving the patients quality of life . 

“Most patients, when they have had enough of the rash – and it comes pretty early on in treatment – will skip a dose or two, or get 50 percent of the dose or stop treatment altogether,” says Merims. 

But the EMRIS solution, she says, “will help everybody on board these treatments.”  

The post Halting Unsightly Rash That Adds To Cancer Patients’ Burden appeared first on NoCamels.

This is especially the case with polypharmacy (when patients take five or more drugs at the same time), says Liat Primor, veteran of the pharmaceutical industry and CEO and co-founder of FeelBetter, a startup dedicated to improving outcomes for patients taking multiple medications. 

“Sometimes patients have not only one condition, they have plenty – 10 or 15 – and they take so many medications,” Primor tells NoCamels.

“They call them the yellow pills, the blue pills, the purple pills,” she says. “They don’t even know that they have a ‘bad pill’.”

Primor describes a scenario in which a medication causes an unwelcome side effect such as insomnia, which leads a patient’s doctor to prescribe another drug to treat that, which then causes constipation, which again requires another regular course of treatment and so on. 

“Instead of changing the first medication, now they have a second medication and a third,” she says. 

The situation is exacerbated when a patient sees multiple doctors for multiple conditions, with each physician treating a particular disorder rather than taking a holistic look at a patient’s treatments.

Primor says that 30 percent of elderly people who require hospital treatment do so because of polypharmacy treatments. And the elderly, she explains, make up most of the patients who take multiple medications. 

“If you would like [a way] to make sure that a patient is getting better with a combination of medications, it does not exist,” she says.   

In fact, a comprehensive, multinational study in 2023 found that 37 percent of the global population are taking five or more medications concurrently, a percentage that rises to 59 percent among those with frail health. The study also warned that clinicians need to take heed of the impact of different medications taken together. 

Understanding this need, FeelBetter uses a proprietary AI-powered platform identify patients who will deteriorate due to polypharmacy issues, aiming to help patients respond better to their drug regimen, and, ultimately, stay out of hospital and in their own homes.

When a patient’s data is complex, it is hard for a physician to gain a full picture in the 10 or 15 minutes usually allotted for each person they see, Primor says.  

“If someone would actually review their medication and see what happened to them, they could stay safe in their community,” she adds.  

Having been placed on her own polypharmacy regimen due to a complicated pregnancy, Primor says that developing the platform became “a quest.” 

She wanted to find a way for technology to help physicians and, perhaps more crucially, clinical pharmacists to identify the patients who were in need of this kind of medical attention before they arrived at the ER or were otherwise hospitalized. 

Primor left her long-term senior position at Teva, the Israeli multinational pharmaceutical company, to create on FeelBetter’s platform in 2018, alongside a team of clinician and high-tech experts, and with the support of investors including Shoni Health Ventures, Firstime Ventures, and Random Forest VC. 

She teamed up with Feelbetter co-founder and COO Yoram Hordan, the former COO of Israeli telecommunications giant Comverse (today known as Xura), who brought the AI and machine learning know-how to the development process. 

“We started this journey together, knowing that our dream eventually was to have those Teva and Comverse [skills] in the health domain that we are creating,” she says. 

According to Primor, while there are other companies working to reduce ADRs for polypharmacy patients, FeelBetter is the only one both working directly with healthcare providers and examining electronic medical records (EMRs) to uncover potential triggers. 

Developing the platform in Israel was more straightforward than in other countries, Primor explains, as Israel has used EMRs for around 20 years. On the other hand, the US, for example, has only had this system in place for the past two or three years. 

Furthermore, because Israel has just four health maintenance organizations, patients tend to remain in the same HMO, unlike in the US where a person’s healthcare provider can change regularly, for multiple reasons. 

“Israel is a huge advantage for every AI company that needs to have deep data on patients,” she says. 

Primor explains that the team started with the concept of identifying adverse drug reactions before they became serious and needed urgent medical attention.  

Working with Leumit Healthcare Services, one of the four Israeli HMOs, they examine the current and past medical records of 170,000 anonymous polypharmacy patients to look for signs of deterioration due the combination of drugs that they are taking. When these signs are identified, FeelBetter informs the HMO and it then informs the patients, allowing preventative steps to be taken. 

The company has just completed a study with Mass General Brigham, one of the largest medical centers in Boston and the leading US institution for hospital-based research. FeelBetter has offices in Boston, where Primor is based, as well as in Herzliya.   

Mass General Brigham validated FeelBetter’s algorithm, Primor says, and even calculated that the platform could save healthcare facilities up to $2,500 per patient by avoiding hospitalization, which would also be down by 24 percent. A peer-reviewed report on the platform is also due to be published next month. 

FeelBetter is also expanding its reach, and has just signed an agreement with Atlantic Health System, one of the biggest healthcare providers in New Jersey, with more than 400 locations.  Atlantic provides care for more than half of the state as well as parts of New York and Pennsylvania, and FeelBetter’s platform will be available for more than 520,000 beneficiaries via the company’s Accountable Care Organizations.

It has also integrated into one of the largest senior care facilities in the United States, where the American Health Care Association says there are some 30,000 assisted living communities with more than 1 million licensed beds. 

Taking a lot of medication requires responsibility, Primor says, on the part of the people and organizations who are trained to prescribe them, to ensure that the regimen is the best possible one for the patient. 

“As we all live longer,” she says, “it will become, for each one of us, our responsibility to ask for that.” 

The post Patient Care Platform Makes Taking Multiple Medications Safer appeared first on NoCamels.

The mitral valve opens between two of the four chambers of the heart, regulating  the flow of blood from the left atrium into the left ventricle below. 

But, LifeCord CEO Yaron David tells NoCamels, in many cases, the flaps of the valve do not close properly and blood flows back into the left atrium, a phenomenon called mitral regurgitation. This puts strain on the heart, forcing it to work harder and eventually causing health issues that can lead to cardiac arrest and even stroke. 

“Two percent of the world population has mitral regurgitation, and it’s a problem that increases with age,” says David.  

This increase in occurrence with age, he explains, means that 10 percent of people aged 75 and above will experience mitral regurgitation. 

As the heart beats, the two mitral valve flaps (known as leaflets) are opened and closed, guided by twin sets of chords that are anchored to the leaflets at the top and to the left ventricle at the bottom. 

In around half of cases, the leaflets are misaligned due to the lengthening or even tearing of the chords over time, usually for only one of the flaps and not both.

David, a mechanical and biomedical engineer with more than a decade of experience in the field of medical devices, compares the chords to the strings on a parachute, which cannot function properly when one of the strings is torn or out of sync with the others. 

LifeCord’s implants are placed in the same location as the chords and effectively replace them in the functioning of the mitral valve. The implant pulls the affected leaflets back into alignment, ensuring that the valve closes fully and any leakage of blood is halted. 

The implant is inserted using a catheter via a blood vessel that is accessed from the groin, and avoid majorly invasive steps. 

“We didn’t invent anything,” David says of the catheterization process. “This is the way they put in stents and heart valves. This was important to us because we didn’t want to invent a new delivery method.” 

The implants are made from nitinol, an alloy of nickel and titanium, which David says makes them extremely durable. 

“Nitinol is a cool material used in stents,” he explains. “It is actually a shape memory alloy and an elastic material. So if you open it a little and then close it, it’s going to stay closed on the leaflet, with no problem, for years and years.”  

The devices are gently clipped at one end onto the leaflet without harming it, and anchored at the other end onto the thick ventricular wall below, beating in time with the heart and effectively taking over the job of the chords. 

And because they are only clipped onto the leaflets without sutures, the devices can be moved to a more effective position without any harm to the delicate tissue and can allow for future interventions – such as actual valve replacement – to take place.  

At present, the most common solution for the disorder is open heart surgery, which David calls “a very complicated” treatment. 

Open heart surgery requires hospitalization for twice as long as the catherization process of the LifeCord solution and has a further recovery period of up to eight weeks. And, unlike the catheterization, the heart is stopped for open heart surgery and the patient placed on a cardiopulmonary bypass machine. 

David explains that aside from the inherent dangers of such invasive surgery, the procedure involves placing a suture the leaflet itself to the ventricular wall, damaging the delicate flaps that are less than half a millimeter thick. 

“If you try to suture a small leaflet, it’s not going to be the same,” he says. “After you finish with it, it’s not going to look the same.”  

The lesser invasive procedure used by LifeCord also means a shorter recuperation period in hospital, of just two to three days, primarily for monitoring the patient.

LifeCord is part of the MEDX Xelerator incubator, and is based at its site in the central city of Or Yehuda. The idea for the clips actually came about as a result of collaboration between the Israeli startup, an unnamed American MEDX strategic partner and Mayo Clinic, the top-ranked hospital in the United States. 

Both of the American institutions are today also investors in LifeCord, along with the Israel Innovation Authority, the branch of government dedicated to promoting the nation’s high-tech sector. 

The company is on the cusp of its first human trials, which are set to take place in Europe, and David believes it will be on the market in around five years. 

“I feel it’s a very good project,” he says. “Every physician I talked to said that it’s a big problem but they are not comfortable performing open heart surgery on a 75-year-old. So to me, it’s a blessing.” 

The post Tiny Implants Are Helping To Mend Actual Broken Hearts appeared first on NoCamels.

“The advancement in AI and GenerativeAI increased the chances of creating new and innovative ideas that weren’t available in the past,” Lerer tells NoCamels. 

“All of a sudden, every company went up a notch,” he says, regarding the innovative potential of the technology. 

“Now let’s create something that you couldn’t create in the past.”  

Indeed, the Israeli high-tech ecosystem has embraced the possibilities that AI brings. A recent report by the government shows that Israel, with its population of just 9.5 million, is ranked in the top 10 in the world for AI development, along with such countries as the US, UK and China. 

There are 2,200 AI-based companies in Israel, Jerusalem says, and many of them are in healthcare. 

Lerer is the managing partner of medtech fund Shoni Health Ventures, which focuses on early-stage digital health and medical device startups. And he cites two medtech companies in the fund’s portfolio that use AI as the basis of their innovation. 

The first is FeelBetter, which uses AI to review a patient’s medical records and their complex medication regimen to determine whether they are on the right courses of treatment in order to improve their preventative care. 

The AI can detect which of the patients are on the verge of serious deterioration and hospitalization that could be prevented by a change in medication alone. 

“It’s an intervention that is very easy and actionable,” he explains. “And it’s working, which is amazing to see.” 

The second is QuantHealth, whose “really unique” algorithm uses big data to maximize the chances of success for studies of new medications. 

The AI adapts the parameters for clinical trials, such as age, dosing and dosage, and runs simulations of those new boundaries to identify the factors that would most improve the possibilities of a positive outcome. 

“Millions of dollars are spent on clinical studies, and 50 percent of them fail,” Lerer says. “Now a pharma company could run the clinical study before it starts, on the computer.”  

Lerer himself has had a finger on the pulse of the medtech sector for decades, while Shoni has close ties with Sheba Medical Center, the largest hospital in the entire Middle East and ranked as one of the top 10 hospitals in the world. 

The fund even has a base at the ARC Center, Sheba’s on-site innovation hub, which grants it an insight into the demands and needs of the medical profession.  

“[It’s] a strategic collaboration with Sheba,” Lerer says. “My office is within the hospital right to really create a real impact and understand the field well, to see what would move the needle.” 

He says clinicians at Sheba also often approach him “consult and brainstorm” on their own nascent ideas for medical innovation, which aside from encouraging innovation by experts in their field, also helps him to understand the unmet needs in the sector and whether they are commercially viable. 

And ideas from inside the profession are just one avenue for medtech innovation, Lerer says, explaining that the sector has been inspired by other areas of the high-tech ecosystem, such as defense. 

He gives as an example the world-famous camera pill created by Israeli company Given Imaging, that aids in the diagnosis of gastrointestinal disease. The tiny camera, he explains, was originally developed as a military tool, but was adapted as a medtech that is swallowed in order to visualize the esophagus, colon and areas of the small intestine without an invasive procedure. 

Even the present war with Hamas in Gaza, with all its terrible implications, will likely be a breeding ground for innovation, according to Lerer. 

“Taking technologies and ideas that might have originated in the army and now transitioning those to healthcare is something that I would expect to happen,” he says.  

“There are people coming back from the army all of a sudden thinking about creative ideas, meeting new co-founders, interacting with people that they’ve never interacted with.” 

There are more than 1,600 healthcare companies in Israel today, Lerer points out, and it is the number one sector in terms of startups. (He does qualify that this does not mean it draws the most investment, as that top spot goes to cybersecurity.) 

“I think there’s a bright future for healthcare in general in Israel,” he says, adding that Israeli medtech companies are raising money both domestically and internationally, and drawing in global clients.  

“Even though the current situation is not is not easy, we will overcome – like we’ve done in the past.” 

The post Medtech Veteran Sees ‘Bright Future’ For Sector In Israel appeared first on NoCamels.

Tel Aviv-based startup Vectorious has created a tiny pressure sensor that is implanted directly into the heart. It is the only sensor in the world that measures the pressure in the left atrium (one of the heart’s two upper chambers) and is able to identify increases in that pressure caused by a buildup of fluid in the body. 

This data on the left atrial pressure (LAP) is then transmitted to an app for the patient and their doctor.  

Fluid buildup occurs during heart failure deterioration and is caused when the heart can no longer effectively pump blood around the body. That fluid buildup, especially in the lungs, causes the pressure within the left atrium to increase – and it is this that Vectorious’ V-LAP device measures. 

“With fluid overload, pretty much the entire system of the body starts to collapse, and the patient gets hospitalized again and again,” Gil Visokolov, Vectorious’ senior director of product, tells NoCamels. 

Through the V-LAP, both the patient and the doctor can see increases in the pressure in the left atrium weeks before any other symptoms begin to manifest. The patient is equipped with a mobile app that instructs them on the doses of a diuretic to control their fluid levels.

This helps reduce the amount of fluid in the body, eases the pressure on the heart and and avoids heart failure deterioration and hospitalization. 

Visokolov explains that cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the number one cause of hospitalization and death in the Western world, while heart failure is the greatest pandemic of cardiovascular diseases. 

In fact, according to the World Health Organization, CVDs are the leading cause of death globally. It says that some 18 million people across the world died from CVD in 2019 – representing 32 percent of all global deaths for that year.  

The V-LAP sensor is put in place via minimally invasive procedure, one of the standard ways of treating blood vessels and the heart and implanting devices into them. 

The sensor has no battery and both receives its charge and sends its data via proprietary technology developed by Vectorious. This is carried out by the patient, who measures the pressure twice a day by putting on a belt-like device around their chest while the two processes are carried out, which Visokolov says takes a short time. 

The data extracted from the device by the belt is then sent wirelessly to the patient’s mobile app that tells the dose of diuretic they should take. Should the pressure levels in the left atrium point to a buildup of fluid at a level that cannot be treated solely by taking the diuretic, the patient’s doctor is informed so that more significant steps can be taken. 

“Instead of having the patient be hospitalized,” says Visokolov, “the V-LAP system will allow you to pinpoint the treatment and to pinpoint the fluid levels.” 

The data and recommended treatment entirely rely on a physical reliable indicator – the LAP and the treatment plan supplied by physicians – without the use of artificial intelligence, he says, as the company decided to use actual diagnoses rather than predictive algorithms. 

Visokolov explains that using the V-LAP device and the patient self-management concept significantly reduce the burden on the medical system and medical professionals, who are mostly already overburdened. This is because most of the time the patients manage themselves by monitoring their LAP and taking the appropriate diuretics, and the physician needs to intervene only as an exception.

This unique concept, which is based on the most accurate and reliable heart failure indication, can reduce the need for hospitalization as it acts as a preventative therapy. 

“Heart specialists, very experienced physicians, and heart center nurses are dealing with chronic diseases,” he says. “They are overworked and overloaded.” 

Indeed, Vectorious says that intervention in the early stages of LAP increase, before symptoms appear, can lead to a dramatic reduction in hospital readmissions for heart failure and better quality of life for the patients. 

Heart failure patients taking charge of their own care, Visokolov says, is a “revolutionary” approach to CVDs. 

“We see patients feel empowered, like they finally have a sense of control,” he says. 

But not only does this method imbue the patient with a greater sense of control over their illness and as a result make them more likely to adhere to the testing regimen, he explains, it also helps with the emotional impact of being a heart failure patient. 

“Heart failure, psychologically, is different to other diseases,” Visokolov says. 

“It’s different to cancer that you fight against – you don’t fight against your heart. And it puts you in a very complex and emotional place.”  

According to Visokolov, Vectorious is the only medtech company using LAP to measure fluid buildup due to heart failure. And this, he says, is largely due to the company’s unique technology and R&D.

The startup was founded in 2011 by Dr. Eyal Orion, a physician with experience of medical devices, and Oren Goldshtein, an electrical engineer, who both recognized the need for a way to easily measure LAP without catheterization.  

And today the company has investors who appreciate the unique technology and its potential, Visokolov says, without identifying them. 

He acknowledges that the technology could be transferable and used to diagnose and treat other diseases, but says that for now the focus is on CVD. 

“The implantable sensors and our impact decisions mean that we’re not limited only to pressure sensing,” says Visokolov. “We have all the building blocks required to make the implantable sensor [for multiple purposes].”  

The LAP sensor is currently in a clinical trial involving dozens of patients in Israel and Europe, with trials also starting soon in the US. 

Visokolov says that the company has also gathered data from thousands of heart failure patients that they have been able to use to further understand the implications of left atrial pressure. 

“Before Vectorious, it was mainly theory based on catheterization, which is done every time patients are hospitalized,” he says. 

“Now we have this routine LAP data, which allows us to create a whole lot of science.” 

The post Tiny Implant Revolutionizes Treatment For Heart Failure Patients  appeared first on NoCamels.

For the average healthy person, the blood-brain barrier (BBB), an extra layer found on blood vessels in the brain, is what protects and defends the sensitive organ from harmful substances, germs and many other sources of potential damage. 

But when it comes to treating brain cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, the blood-brain barrier is less of a protective layer and more of a hindrance to effective treatments, presenting one of the biggest medical challenges in modern medicine today. 

Nanocarry Therapeutics is hoping to bring an end to this devastating situation. The Ness Ziona-based biopharmaceutical company is developing a novel class of drugs, based on their innovative nano-platform technology, which are able to increase penetration to the BBB and deliver potentially life-saving therapies to the brain.  

“This platform has limitless possibilities because we can attach any antibody to it and deliver it to the brain,” Michal Roytman Haham, Chief Business Officer of Nanocarry, tells NoCamels.

With a successful non-invasive technology for traversing the blood-brain barrier, Nanocarry could ultimately extend the reach of already existing therapies to the brain – a location that was previously out of reach.  

To get the process started, the company selected HER2 positive breast cancer brain metastases as the area of focus for their first drug development.

The Mayo Clinic explains HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer as a condition that tests positive for a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), which promotes the growth of cancer cells. 

Nanocarry says it chose to tackle this medical condition because there is already a highly effective treatment for HER2 metastatic breast cancer, but it is in desperate need of what the company is offering – a successful platform to deliver the drug through the BBB to provide direct treatment to the brain. 

Roytman Haham says that while HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer has undergone a “really dramatic revolution” over the past two decades, primarily due to the introduction of biological therapies, this unfortunately does not include the cases that have spread to the brain, which happens in 50 percent of patients, because of the inability of these biological drugs to cross the BBB in sufficient quantities. 

“The drugs that normally work very well outside the brain cannot enter the brain and therefore, the prognosis actually plummets to less than one year,” Roytman Haham tells NoCamels. 

“This is exactly what we were looking for when searching for a disease where our technology can make a real difference in patients’ lives. A disease that has a systemic and brain manifestation and while the systemic disease, meaning outside the brain, is treated effectively, the brain remains unreachable,” she says. 

“That leads to an extremely tragic situation where women who achieved disease control and potentially still have a life to live, lose their lives because of brain metastases.” 

Roytman Haham explains that for metastatic HER2 positive breast cancer that has not metastasized to the brain, there has been transformative advancement in treatment over the past 20 years, with the introduction of biological therapy. 

Known commercially as Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Perjeta (pertuzumab), these two antibodies are considered the gold standard in treating HER2 positive metastatic  breast cancer patients. 

With the help of Nanocarry’s BBB technology platform, Herceptin and Perjeta could penetrate the blood-brain barrier, together, to reach the brain and deliver treatment directly to the site of the tumor, potentially transforming the survival of patients with brain metastases as well.  

Indeed, the US government’s National Cancer Institute says HER2 positive breast cancer that has not spread to any other organs in the body or the axillary lymph nodes has a 5-year relative survival rate of between 97.3 to 98.8 percent. 

Roytman Haham stresses that Nanocarry is not the only company that targets blood-brain barrier penetration, with both invasive and noninvasive technologies already under development.  

While the technologies that are invasive do disrupt the blood-brain barrier, the noninvasive technologies are based on a scientific concept called the “trojan horse,” which leverages the brain’s natural processes by targeting receptors on the BBB, enabling large molecules to enter the brain. 

Nanocarry says it has innovatively combined this approach with nanoparticle technology to enhance its effectiveness. The company is using insulin as its trojan horse, attached to nano-particles that also carry multiple copies of antibodies. 

The insulin binds to insulin receptors that are abundant on the BBB cells, resulting in quick internalization across the barrier and providing efficient drug delivery.

What sets Nanocarry apart from the other “trojan horse” technologies is that it is the only company able to utilize insulin as the shuttle molecule, made possible by the distinctive design of their gold nanoparticles platform. Insulin is considered to be 10 times more effective than other shuttle molecules in penetrating the blood-brain barrier and delivering treatment. 

This capability holds great promise in delivering sufficient doses required for diseases such as breast cancer brain metastases.

“It remains stable, and it reaches the brain, safely delivering the drug in high amounts. So basically, we’re the only company that has been able to devise this very, very effective shuttle across the blood-brain barrier,” Roytman Haham says.

The first therapy being developed with Nanocarry’s BBB technology carries multiple copies of Herceptin and Projeta, delivering them directly to the tumor site inside of the brain.

The potentially lifesaving technology was developed over the course of a decade at the Bar Ilan University Faculty of Engineering, in the lab of Prof. Rachela Popovtzer, a world expert in nanomedicine and today Nanocarry’s chief scientific officer. And the solution was formulated by Nanocarry COO Dr. Oshra Betzer as part of her PhD and postdoctoral work.  

Popovtzer and Betzer founded Nanocarry in 2021, along with its CEO and experienced biotech executive Dr. Revital Mandil Levin. Today, the three women founders run the company with their small team, also made up primarily of women.  

Having successfully completed proof of concept studies in animal models, the biopharmaceutical company is now starting their studies towards receiving Investigational New Drug (IND) status by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is granted to experimental therapies for serious or immediately life-threatening conditions that show promise in clinical testing. 

With the urgent unmet needs in treatment of brain metastases in breast cancer patients, Roytman Haham explains, the FDA usually expedites the approval process for pharmaceutical companies in order to bring such life-saving treatments to market as soon as possible.  

Based on the timeline for drugs that have been approved for similar life-threatening diseases, Nanocarry are confident that they will have that fast track to market. Nanocarry expects to run two clinical trials, which are estimated to begin next year, followed by the expedited FDA approval.  

“Our results are truly unprecedented,” says Roytman Haham. 

“We’ve shown massive brain penetration and accumulation within the tumor site and very significant tumor growth inhibition – exactly the effect these drugs achieve outside the brain.” 

In its early days, Nanocarry’s main backer was the US-Israeli venture capital firm NFX. Additional firms now also provide funding, including Sapir Venture Partners and UnBox Ventures, the on-site venture studio at Bar-Ilan University. It has also received support from the Israel Innovation Authority, the branch of the government dedicated to promoting the national high-tech sector, and several private investors.  

Nanocarry is focusing first on FDA approval, which it intends to follow with EU authorization, and hopes to be on the market in 2028.  

If they achieve their date target, Nanocarry will have made it to market just seven years after the company’s founding. The development time of new drugs takes on average 10 to 15 years, and even longer for newer branches of medicine. 

Ultimately, Nanocarry hopes to continue to develop their BBB drugs and provide more effective forms of treatment for many of the other devastating brain diseases for which treatment has proven elusive.  

“Potentially, we can attach any drug and deliver it to the brain,” Roytman Haham concludes, “unlocking limitless possibilities in a wide range of central nervous system diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, neuro-inflammatory diseases and beyond.”  

The post Penetrating Brain’s Natural Barrier To Deliver Life-Saving Drugs appeared first on NoCamels.

Veinway CEO and co-founder Jordan Pollack tells NoCamels that chronic venous disorders – a term covering a gamut of issues from varicose veins to pulmonary embolism – affect just under 10 percent of the global population and can greatly impair overall health and quality of life.  

Among these disorders is blocked veins caused by blood clots, including deep vein thrombosis (DVT) – blood clots deep within the body. And successfully unblocking these veins, usually in the legs, has proven to be an unanswered challenge. 

Pollack says that healthcare systems are not really set up to deal with patients with this issue, as it has not been a priority for them. 

Patients with blood clots, he claims, are often brushed off with compression stockings, which gently squeeze the legs to stimulate blood circulation, or anticoagulants, which thin the blood. Neither of these, he says, is really a permanent or fully effective solution. 

Indeed, the US Center for Advanced Cardiac and Vascular Interventions says that stockings do not actually dislodge already formed clots, while top American hospital the Mayo Clinic says that blood thinners do reduce the risk of clotting but cannot prevent it altogether.  

These blood clots have to be treated within two to three weeks, Pollack explains. After that, the clot transforms into scar tissue made up of collagen, a protein found throughout the body, and fibrin, an unyielding substance formed from the fibrinogen protein in the blood.

 “You no longer have a vein essentially,” Pollack says.

When clinicians do try invasive intervention by inserting a stent to clear a clot, he explains, they use the same technique as for a blocked artery. 

“But it’s a completely different procedure than in the arteries,” he says. “Trying to place a stent is often an exercise in futility and definitely frustration.” 

Pollack tells NoCamels that physicians are simply not using the right tools to deal with blood clots, and are in fact still using methods from the 1980s – such as guide wires and balloons – to traverse the blood clot and open up the vein.  

“I’ve seen a lot of MacGyver-like improvisations,” he says, referring to the ‘80s TV action hero known for his ad hoc solutions. 

“I’ve seen all kinds of craziness because nobody’s given them the right tools that they need to be successful.” 

He explains that for the past three or four decades, interventional vascular medicine has focused on arterial disorders, which have more immediate and serious ramifications than venous disorders. 

“Veins are often called the forgotten vessels,” he says. 

Veinway’s solution is called Traversa, a catheter-based device that uses proprietary technology to be more flexible than other incarnations and which is uniquely designed to deal with blocked veins. 

“It’s the first device designed for crossing chronic occlusions in veins,” says Pollack, whose background is in biomedical engineering. “It’s designed to guarantee crossing quickly and safely.”

The device comprises an inflatable balloon and a steerable needle that can be bent by as much as 60 degrees, rotate a full 360 degrees and move both forward and backward. 

“[This gives] three independent degrees of freedom,” he says.  

The needle is encased inside the balloon, which, when inflated within the vein, acts as anchor to hold the device in place while the needle advances forward through the blockage. 

Pollack compares the consistency of the scar tissue in a blocked vein to a car tire or chewed-up piece of gum. 

“We designed a device specifically for dealing with this kind of material,” he says. 

Traversa has yet to begin full human trials, but Pollack says it has already been used in a small number of cases in the US and Europe in a compassionate use setting, when a patient is facing a grave or life-threatening disease and there are no other potential solutions. 

He explains that in those cases, the device demonstrated its ability to break through blockages that no other intervention has been able to permeate. 

“We crossed them quickly and reliably,” he says. 

The Or Yehuda-based Veinway was established in 2020 at the initiative of the Israeli MedTech incubator MEDX Xelerator, whose core mission is to build and support “high impact” ventures that resolve unmet clinical issues.   

“I took just the unmet need as a challenge,” Pollack recalls. “We learned about it and then we brainstormed and developed it ourselves.”  

The young startup is now nearing the end of its Series A funding round. It has also had investment from the Israel Innovation Authority, the branch of the government dedicated to promoting the national tech sector, as well as MEDX and its long-term partner Boston Scientific, a leading US biomedical engineering firm. 

And it is the US market that Veinway is primarily focused on, where Pollack says some 900,000 people are diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis every year (although there are similar levels of diagnosis in Europe too). The company hopes to have completed its human trials and be ready for market by the third quarter of 2025.  

Pollack says that Traversa’s solution takes on even more significance when one considers the fact that venous diseases do not just afflict the elderly, and can be caused by a genetic disposition such as hypercoagulability, when the blood clots more easily. 

And because many people suffer from these disorders while they are still young, treatments will stay with them for decades and not just a handful of years – making a reliable, long-term solution all the more critical. 

“The healthcare system has to understand that these are patients that when you treat them… you’re going to have to follow them for their entire lives,” he says. 

“It’s one of these things that I think there’s a lack of awareness around.”

The post Coming Through! Device Clears Veins Blocked By Clots, Scar Tissue   appeared first on NoCamels.

Patient Specific Instruments (PSI) were initially introduced to Israeli hospitals seven years ago by the Netanya-based company Synergy 3DMed, but have become a reliable tool since the start of the war. 

The technology involves using advanced 3D printing techniques to create PSIs and devices in point-of-care 3D printing labs, for procedures such as bone reconstruction and joint replacement. This allows for quick preoperative planning by surgeons using 3D visualization models as well as physical colorful segmented 3D models. 

“Everything we are doing now we did before the war but now because [the technology] is available so fast, the physicians were able to use it very fast,” Michael Librus, CEO of Synergy 3DMed, tells NoCamels. 

“Once you have all these materials and tools, you can think out of the box and you can produce a prosthesis and customized implants inside the hospital,” he says. 

“You are able to do in a few hours now what the patient had to wait [weeks or months] for before to get something anatomically customized.” 

The printing tech is currently located at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and Hadassah University Hospital-Ein Kerem in Jerusalem, with a new lab being built at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva. 

Following a CT scan, Synergy 3DMed medical designers can create a 3D virtual segmentation model in consultation with surgeons, which they can manipulate on screen. 

A physical 3D segmented model can then be printed, which the surgeons can manually manipulate – allowing for preoperative planning of what PSI is needed, and how to use and place it. 

This allows them to go into an actual operation already knowing what they need to do rather than having to decide during the operation, which, notes LIbrus, allows for a safer and shorter operation time.

“The delivery time is incredibly fast and that’s the game changing ability to be on premises at the facility with the people and software to support [medical staff] inside the hospital,” he says. 

“The physicians were able to go back to the lab, [see] exactly what they needed and then go back to the patient. And in a few hours they got the tools they needed—whether it was the segmentation or 3D virtual planning that they asked to see.”

Being able to treat patients quickly has been a significant factor in being able to reduce recovery time in hospital, allowing patients to go home or to a rehabilitation facility sooner, freeing up hospital beds for other patients. 

This is crucial during this time in particular, when Israeli hospitals are receiving hundreds of wounded patients at once. 

In addition, Librus says, quick treatment time has been shown to help a patient’s self-confidence as well as confidence in the medical team. This in turn has also been proven to help with recovery time. 

Once a patient is shown the printed 3D model and is actually able to see and understand the procedure to be performed, they are more likely to cooperate in the rehabilitation process, he says.

Librus, who studied industrial design in the USA and Italy, originally founded the company as a design studio using 3D printing methods to create prototypes for customers. 

Seven years ago, they were asked by Stratasys, a leader of industrial 3D printing and additive manufacturing solutions, to take their design capabilities and production facilities into Israeli hospitals to use new biocompatible materials for surgical needs. 

Librus credits the “entrepreneurial” surgeon Dr. Solomon Dadia, then deputy director of orthopedic oncology at Ichilov and today the hospital’s head of the surgical innovation and 3D printing unit, as being pivotal in helping introduce the pioneering technology into Israeli medical facilities. 

Recently, an Israeli TV news segment highlighted the 3D printing of a PSI device for an IDF military dog who had had part of his skull shattered in a military operation in Gaza. 

A CT of the brave canine’s head provided the surgeons with a look at the shape of the missing piece of skull. Medical planners of Synergy 3DMed were then able to recreate the segment and the surgeon fit it—almost like a missing puzzle piece—into the skull of the dog, who fully recovered after the operation. 

The same process was used for a soldier who sustained similar injuries in Gaza:  Synergy 3DMed medical designers were able to provide surgeons with an exact printed PSI which was fitted to safely close up the skull. 

The news report showed the soldier, post-operation, visiting neurosurgeon Prof. Jonathan Roth, head of the neuroendoscopic unit at Ichilov, and smiling as he incredulously held the printed 3D model that had assisted the physician in the operation.

“Each procedure is a unique opportunity to help someone,” says Librus. 

“Sometimes it’s a dancer who you help reconstruct her broken leg so she can dance again, and sometimes it’s a dog to support him to go back to living. We owe them this as human beings to give them back their lives. 

“Each story is mind blowing because you know this patient will not need any revisions later and they will be back contributing to the country, and will have back their quality of life.”

The procedure has been used in over 2,000 cases in 25 hospitals – mainly in Israel but also in England and Spain. It was used in 16 different surgical disciplines, including in oncological surgical treatments reducing bone loss, as well as for repair of congenital malformations. 

“Everybody gets real benefit from having access to this material,” says Librus. 

“The physician can be very creative, and create their new method of work or solution; they have this flexibility of materials.” 

Part of the company’s strategy has been to create an academic program at the Holon Institute of Technology for medical designers who will be needed as this technology expands, Librus explains. 

“You need to think differently to create innovation to be very multidisciplinary, to connect together chemistry, physics, electronics and to create a solution that mixes a lot of knowledge,” he says. 

“We are working to create new students who are very multidisciplinary.”

Medical technology companies such as the global leader Medtronic are realizing this is the future of the industry, says Librus, and a few other companies worldwide have begun working with similar technology. 

As for Synergy 3DMed, its next mission is to raise $8 million to move into the United States and Europe.

“Now we need to duplicate this to the rest of the world. If we are not spreading this to the rest of the world we are not contributing to humanity,” Librus says. 

He notes that while Israel is a “great place” for R&D and to create innovation, to scale up, the technology must be introduced into the rest of the world. 

“This is what we will be doing in the next few years. We’ll finish this war, the economic situation will be better and then we will continue with the journey we started seven years ago.”

The post ‘Game-Changing’ Tech 3D-Prints Customized Parts For Patients appeared first on NoCamels.

Amid the innovative treatments offered by hospitals and rehabilitation institutions is a laser-based therapy that tackles chronic pain experienced by soldiers.  

The use of the low-level laser that administers the treatment and the treatment itself is the work of Canadian-born Israeli specialist Dr. Ed Shane. 

Shane works out of internationally ranked Sheba Medical Center, the largest hospital both in Israel and the entire Middle East, which at the end of October opened a new unit dedicated to rehabilitation for soldiers and civilians wounded in the war.  

He tells NoCamels he had already been treating wounded veterans for chronic pain when war broke following the October 7 mass terror attack by Hamas. 

Since then, he has extended his practice to treat soldiers for whom the current conflict has taken a physical toll – and not just from wounds sustained in battle.

“We’re also seeing [soldiers] coming back from the front who are experiencing pain in the back because they’re carrying very heavy loads,” Shane explains. “And they can’t just say ‘okay, I’m sorry, I have back pain. I can’t carry this.’ There’s a war going on.”

The laser system that Shane uses is a small hand-held device called “Handy Cure,” which is also available for use in the home. Shane, however, couples the laser treatment with acupuncture and other therapies for a more holistic approach. 

“I’m getting very good feedback that these treatments are helpful,” he says.  

“When we use it, there is a reduction in pain and a feeling of better mobility, less tension.”  

In fact, he says, many patients say they experience an immediate improvement – sometimes reporting an improvement up to 80 percent.  

The concept of using lasers for chronic pain was first developed some 20 years ago in Russia to treat cosmonauts, after no other solution was found to work. 

The laser treatment has a series of effects on the chemical functions inside the body, Shane explains. It stimulates mitochondria, the “power cells” that create energy in the body. This in turn causes a release of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a molecule that provides energy for cell functions such as muscle contraction. 

Furthermore, according to Shane, the treatment also activates the stem cells in the body, which he explains is very important for repairing damage.  

“The benefits are pain relief, tissue repair, anti-inflammatory effects [and] some neurological regeneration,” he explains.

He says that the treatment is reportedly “very good” for healing wounds, and says that he would like to explore this avenue as well. 

Trained in the US and Canada, Shane has been using lasers for pain relief for decades, and after arriving in Israel almost nine years ago began working with this particular device at Sheba and in his own private practice. 

The device itself is very straightforward to operate, with a simple setting to determine the depth of penetration of the laser into the muscle. 

Shane advises his patients to consider purchasing the Handy Cure, which costs around $500, to keep up their treatments when they need extra relief. 

“Then you have a piece of equipment in your hand where you can control the pain,” he says. 

Furthermore, he adds, the device holds its charge well, is easy to sanitize and takes up little room. 

Shane does not see a limit to the number of times that the treatment can be used. He recommends a daily session at the outset, to bring down the levels of pain. Once the patient experiences pain reduction, he says, the frequency of the treatment can also be reduced correspondingly. 

“If it works for that person,” he says, “it’s the best thing that they could possibly have.” 

The post Laser Zaps Away Chronic Pain For Wounded Israeli Soldiers appeared first on NoCamels.

A group of medical professionals with their own knowledge and personal experience of fractures have created a method of heightening bone regeneration, enhancing the body’s natural healing processes.   

A fracture heals in a series of stages: First the body forms blood clots at the site of the injury to mark the start of the process, which is then followed by the creation of a temporary bone (soft callus) to hold the bone together as it begins to heal. This soft callus is slowly replaced by regenerated bone (also known as hard callus), which continues to strengthen even after a cast or brace is removed.  

OrthoTreat says its treatment helps in every step of this healing process. 

“What we’re doing is regulating the cascade of bone regeneration and improving it,” OrthoTreat co-founder Dr. Hilik Marom tells NoCamels. 

OrthoTreat’s ModulX therapy is administered via an injection at the site of a fracture. The gel-like substance contains two separate components – a known medication and a plant-based molecule. 

And according to Marom, this combination enhances the process of bone regeneration in two different ways – by strengthening the bone and by improving its psychological structure. 

The gel is applied directly onto the surface of the bone as a bonding agent when the two sides cannot be fully brought back together or as a supplement to bones that have sustained more debilitating damage. 

Borrowing technological terminology, Marom compares ModulX to software rather than hardware. The therapy is designed to facilitate the body’s own healing mechanisms rather than introducing external apparatus such as a graft or screws to hold a broken bone in place as it knits back together. 

Even so, Marom says, the ModulX gel can also be used alongside such therapies, depending on the state of the bone and the kind of injury it has sustained.  

“You just have to apply it on the surface of the bone,” says Marom. “This is it. As long as you’re in contact with a bone, it works.” 

The one-off treatment is slowly released over approximately 21 days, a period the company says is crucial in bone healing.  

“The majority of the effect that we bring will be in those first three weeks,” OrthoTreat CEO Sahar Meiron tells NoCamels. 

“[This] will massively improve that healing time and strength, bringing a much better environment for the body to do its own work.” 

A way to facilitate healing in bone fractures has long eluded researchers, Marom says.  

“The new solution of bone regeneration is the Holy Grail,” he explains. “Everyone is looking for it.”  

Marom worked as a researcher in two different bone laboratories, participating in multiple efforts to improve the healing process for bone fractures, all of which were unsuccessful. 

“We were failing again and again and again,” he says, explaining that in all of the different attempts, at most they could enhance the healing process by 5-10 percent. 

“And that’s really not significant – it’s not really an improvement,” he says. 

OrthoTreat, however, says its treatment can improve bone regeneration by up to 35 percent and even reduce the perils that come with any surgery. 

“We are improving the outcomes and we are minimizing risks, which is the optimal for any orthopedist or traumatologist,” Marom says.  

Indeed, the funding for the Tel Aviv-based startup, which was founded in 2020, has largely come from experts in the field of orthopedics and stakeholders such as sports professionals who often suffer from bone injuries. 

“We have many orthopedics worldwide who have been investing,” says Meiron. “Some small biotech companies and people who have an understanding of the need within different areas.” 

In fact, the startup’s British chief medical officer, Prof. Mansoor Khan, initially expressed interest in OrthoTreat as a potential investor but within days joined the company. 

“You’ve not got people who are just throwing money at it,” says Khan, a visiting professor at Imperial College London, consultant in major trauma for the National Health Service and former head of surgery in the Royal Navy. 

“You’ve got people who are experts in the field of trauma investing. You’ve got people who know what they’re talking about, willing to put their money where their mouth is,” he tells NoCamels. 

The company aims to complete its human trials and be on the market by 2028 with a product whose price will make it an option worldwide – including in developing nations. 

“If you look at the price of this drug, it’s probably going to be less than one screw that orthopedic surgeons use,” says Khan. “It’s affordable, it works, it’s safe, and it can be brought to market very, very soon.”

Meiron says ModulX merely helps the human body to heal in the optimal way possible. 

“The body knows how to play the music, it knows how to play the tune,” he says. “We are the conductor.” 

The post New Gel Jab Aims To Help Broken Bones Heal Back Better  appeared first on NoCamels.

The World Health Organization says Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia, with around 40 million sufferers worldwide in 2023. There is no cure for or even a universally accepted cause of the disease, despite it being first diagnosed more than a century ago.

In 2017, Dr. Amir Glik, the director of Cognitive Neurology at Beilinson Hospital, realized that of his Jewish patients experiencing cognitive decline, well over half were Sephardi Jews – those who originate from Spain and Portugal in Southern Europe and later North Africa and the Middle East. 

“I started asking myself, why does it happen?” Glik tells NoCamels. “Whether my feeling is something that I can prove with statistical methods or is it just a feeling.” 

Glik and his team then began to go through hundreds of patient files at the hospital’s cognitive neurology clinic, some dating back years, to see whether there were statistics to back up this intuition. 

“After doing the work, examining hundreds of patients, we saw that this is correct,” Glik says. 

What they found was that 64 percent of the Jewish patients with early onset dementia were Sephardi, as compared to 36 percent Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern and Northern Europe. 

The team then went to Israel’s Health Ministry and other government bodies to acquire annually updated data, which also bore out the trend that they had uncovered at Beilinson. 

Glik stresses that the study relates to people aged around 60, who are below the average age for Alzheimer’s diagnosis but older than those who have genetic inclination to develop the disease in their 40s. 

According to Glik, Israel’s relatively homogeneous population makes it easier to identify genetic trends within certain ethnic groups and then expand any findings out to more diverse communities. 

“The idea when you do a genetic study is to take a population that is a closed population,” he says. “[And] people who studied genetics said that Israel is heaven from a genetical standpoint.”  

Glik explains that in a closed population such as Israel, less diversity means there will be a higher percentage of the population with certain genetic risk factors, making them easier to locate. 

“In order to find a genetic risk factor in a homogenic population like the Ashkenazi Jews, or like the [Sephardi] Jews, you need a much lower number of participants in order to find the genetic risk factors,” he says.

He gives the example of the Israeli research that discovered that Ashkenazi Jewish women are more genetically disposed to developing breast cancer. This is because one in every 40 Ashkenazi Jewish women has a mutation of the BRCA gene, something which increases the risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer at a young age. Conversely, only one in every 140 Sephardi Jewish women has the gene mutation.  

Once identified, Glik says, these risk factors can then be examined in more heterogenic populations such as in the United States or Europe. 

Glik maintains that in the past few years there has been a subtle “revolution” going on in the study of Alzheimer’s disease, unbeknown to most people. 

He highlights the introduction of two new drugs to “clean” the build up of the Amyloid beta protein in the brain, which is thought to be one of the primary factors in the development of Alzheimer’s. A third new drug is expected to receive approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the summer. 

“What happened in psychiatry 20, 30 years ago is now happening in Alzheimer’s disease” Glik says.  

Indeed, the Beilinson study has drawn attention from the US government. Its National Institute of Health has provided $13 million to expand Glik’s genetic research into a joint study with Boston University School of Medicine and three other Israeli medical centers. 

The hope is that this will help advance early detection, treatment and care for sufferers of the disease. 

“We want to know what are the mechanisms that cause Alzheimer’s disease,” Glik says.

“If we know the genes that are risk factors for the disease, then we can learn about the mechanisms of the disease and maybe find a drug that can interfere in this mechanism, and postpone disease development. That’s the aim.” 

The post Jewish Genes Open Door For Potential Alzheimer’s Breakthrough appeared first on NoCamels.

Israeli medtech company Bonus Biogroup says it has created a way of doing just that – and aims to bring its tissue regeneration innovation to the market in the next couple of years.  

The company works in the fields of cell therapy and tissue engineering, growing live human tissue in vitro (outside of the body) “in systems that mimic our body,” Dr. Tomer Bronstein, Bonus Biogroup VP of Business Development, tells NoCamels. 

Millions of people lose bone tissue every year for a variety of reasons, he explains, including trauma, war, osteoporosis (loss of bone quality) or cancer. 

“Until now, the gold standard for patients who have lost bone tissue was to take a bone from one location in the body and to move it into the graft location,” Bronstein explains. 

“For example, if you’re losing bone in the lower jaw, you can take one of the ribs, cut it and put it over there. And it’s being done in millions of patients every year worldwide,” he says. 

This is simple to do when the process involves a small amount of tissue, Bronstein says, but using larger amounts of bone means leaving a gap in the original location.  

“This was the gold standard until Bonus came to the table,” he says. 

The Bonus Biogroup proprietary BonoFill platform involves taking cells from the body that Bronstein calls “damage control” cells, and growing them according to the needs of the individual patient. 

“We grow them in vitro to the amount and specification we need within the trauma or gap area, and then within a relatively short time we have enough bone to fill the cavity,” he says.  

These cells are known as mesenchymal cells (MSCs), that can both renew themselves and change their function.  

“These are the regeneration agents of the body,” explains Bonus CEO Dr. Shai Meretzki. “They are responsible for creating three types of tissue – fat, cartilage and bone tissue… We are taking them from the fat tissue of the patient himself.”

The cells are placed into a bioreactor that recreates the conditions for growth inside the human body and after two weeks the tissue can be injected into the gap in the bone. 

Every patient receives a transplant solely made up of their own original cells, which Bronstein explains is the only way to create “seamless” repair with tissue that will stay in the body for life.

“You cannot actually tell where the cavity was: it’s completely healthy, completely normal bone,” he says. “We’re talking about full and complete healing.” 

Meretzki gives the example of successful bone replacement for a man involved in a vehicular accident that left him with a gap of eight centimeters in the bone in a lower leg. 

“This patient underwent three prior failed interventions before being treated by BonoFill,” he tells NoCamels. “He was nearly two years in a wheelchair and at a certain point they considered amputating the leg, because it had no function.”

But just two and a half months after the procedure, Meretzki says, the man was able to jump up and down, and a year and half after the tissue replacement he participated in an Ironman competition. 

Another case involved a man who ignored toothache caused by a bacterial cyst that ultimately caused a sizable hole in his lower jaw. BonoFill was placed into the hole, and six months later the man was able to have tooth implants in the regenerated bone. 

BonoFill has completed phase two clinical trials for facial reconstructions, with a 90-percent success rate, Bronstein says. The company is now entering phase three trials in the US, where it aims to receive approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

The use of BonoFill for limbs is still in phase two trials in Israel. The trial, which is taking place in six locations, was recently expanded to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. The expansion was designed to help treat the victims of the October 7 terror attack and Israeli soldiers who were wounded in the subsequent war against Hamas in Gaza. 

“Most of the soldiers are protected by body armor, but the limbs are completely exposed,” Meretzki says. “We are doing what we can in order to assist and facilitate healing in this area as well.” 

Founded in 2008, the Haifa-based company has to date raised a reported $60 million in funding from private investment, and today is publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. 

And according to Meretzki, Bonus’ competitors are “somewhere in very early academic research on animals and years behind in terms of development.” 

In January, the company received the Cell Therapy Biotech Innovation Award at Advanced Therapies Week, a prestigious international conference held in the US to showcase global innovative treatments.  

“Bonus Biogroup is recognized as one of the leading – if not the leading – entities in the world in these areas of cell therapy and tissue engineering,” says Meretzki.

The company is now developing other therapeutics based on the same process,  aiming to create blood vessels for transplanted organs to help stop the body rejecting them and to mitigate inflammation that can prove deadly in respiratory diseases such as COVID-19 and pneumonia.  

To Meretzki, the future holds boundless opportunities for healing, as long as the ideas are there. 

“[First Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion said that in order to be a realist in the State of Israel, you need to believe in miracles,” he says. 

The post Growing Bone From Your Own Tissue For ‘Seamless’ Healing  appeared first on NoCamels.

Founded in 2021 as an initiative of the Israel Innovation Authority, Rehovot-based Aion Labs has taken a ground-up approach to healthcare R&D – first determining the most pressing issues and then building a startup around the solution to each one. 

“We’re working in a model that we’re creating startups [and] each one will address a different point in the value chain and how we understand disease mechanisms, discover new drugs and then develop them,” Aion CEO Mati Gill tells NoCamels.  

“We start with the problem and actually create the company ourselves.” 

Gill explains that the development of a new drug usually takes more than a decade to complete, at an average cost of $2 billion. And even then, he says, more than 90 percent of the drugs in development fail when they enter human clinical trials.  

But according to Gill, by harnessing new technologies, the resources of the pharmaceutical giants and the ingenuity of the international scientific community, Aion can make the entire process far more efficient and efficacious. 

“[There is] a huge opportunity here to discover new drugs, to be able to treat diseases that are currently unchartable – and then be able to make that whole process much faster, cheaper, more affordable and more highly predictable, in a manner that will make the whole element much more technologically advanced by using data, by using artificial intelligence,” Gill says.

Aion Labs is happily located next to Israel’s internationally renowned Weizmann Institute of Science, and, since its foundation less than three years ago, has overseen the creation of a handful of startups. Each one, says Gill, addresses “a big challenge in the value chain.”  

The center is working with R&D teams from many of the major global pharmaceutical companies as well as the startups, some operating for the first time in Israel. 

Gill explains that while homegrown Teva and Germany’s Merck have long had an Israeli presence, US-based Pfizer and British-Swedish AstraZeneca are opening R&D centers in the country for the first time, at Aion. He says this is because the technological innovation for which Israel has garnered worldwide acclaim is taking a more prominent role in life sciences research. 

“The tech portion of the biotech equation is becoming much more important,” he says. 

“AI, machine learning and computational technologies are becoming much more important to the future of the pharma industry. That’s where Israel actually has the chance to be a great ecosystem and competitive one at a global scale.” 

The pharma companies and Aion Labs – along with Amazon Web Services managing the technical side and the Israel Biotech Fund offering investment support – work together to identify what Gill calls “big research challenges” that have the potential to be solved using AI and other computational technologies. 

He explains that Aion Labs first identifies an issue to be resolved and then searches for “great scientists” who will be able to come up with a solution. 

The person or team selected is then set up as a startup, with either seed or pre-seed funding (Aion has programs for both) and any necessary assistance. 

“We establish them with an early stage investment and help them to grow and validate their technologies,” Gill says. 

He gives the example of Combinable.ai, a biotech startup working on optimization of antibodies (proteins created in the body to fight infections) to develop new medicines. 

Before the startup was formed or even conceived of, Aion consulted with R&D experts from the pharma companies, inviting them to pose a major issue whose resolution would have a massive impact on the industry. 

The companies came back with the challenge of building a platform based on AI and machine-learning technologies that could optimize antibodies to create efficient and safe drugs. 

Furthermore, they said, the new drugs should be able to successfully undergo clinical testing and secure approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to be used to treat patients.

According to Gill, successfully building such a platform based on machine-learning would reduce a process that had taken years to weeks or even days.  

“We started out just with that problem statement, not with the solution,” Gill recalls. “We said ‘okay, here’s the big problem that our pharma companies are willing to invest a million dollars in’.”  

The call to arms elicited applications from “very talented folks” around the world, he says. Aion narrowed the field down to 15 applicants who were all invited to a week-long workshop in Israel before the final team – including German, Israeli and Russian researchers – was ultimately selected.  

“Part of our philosophy is that if you’re going to be a global ecosystem, you have to compete with global talents,” he says. 

And while Israel is very proud of the amount of Silicon Valley unicorns (startups valued at over a billion dollars) that were built by its native daughters and sons, Gill explains that preserving Israel’s status as the Startup Nation means bringing that global talent to build companies in the country.

As such, a worldwide call has already been issued for solutions to the next challenge – using an AI/machine learning computational platform in work with RNA (molecules that are vital to most functions carried out by the body). 

And in June, the finalists in that challenge will arrive in Israel to present their solutions to the experts at Aion Labs. 

“From publishing it online and doing our initial scouting for scientists, founders, both in Israel and abroad, we are seeing some interest,” Gill says. 

“I’m very confident that we’ll have a good team ultimately chosen out of this whole process to lead the new startup.” 

The post In Israel, Big Pharma & Innovators Are Using Tech To Fight Disease appeared first on NoCamels.

Some 15 million people suffer a stroke every year, according to the World Health Organization. One third of them will not survive it and another third will sustain permanent disability.  

Atrial fibrillation (AF), when a person’s heart beats irregularly and often very quickly, makes someone five times more at risk of an ischemic stroke (caused by a blood clot in the brain) and two times more likely to die from it.  

The name atrial fibrillation refers to the atria – the two upper chambers of the heart that are responsible for pushing blood into the lower chambers or ventricles, from where it is pumped to the rest of the body. 

An irregular heartbeat means that the atria do not always push all of the blood into the ventricles, leaving some behind in a small sac in the left atrium, where it can form potentially deadly blood clots. 

Append Medical has developed a procedure to seal off this sac – known as the left atrial appendage (LAA) – without posing any dangers to a person’s health and reducing the risk of blood clots forming in the heart. 

“The left atrial appendage is a kind of a pocket-shaped organ placed in the left atrium [and] when you have heart rhythm issues, the blood flow is not consistent there,” Append Medical CEO Nadav Agian tells NoCamels. 

“It creates a kind of blood stagnation in this pocket, and when you have blood stagnation, clots are potentially being created there.”

The Append solution to this issue seals off the LAA with a simple suture, which prevents blood entering the sac and ultimately causing it to atrophy.  

“This is a preventive treatment in order to reduce the risk of stroke in these patients,” Agian says. 

He explains that the current solutions for the clots in the LAA come with their own risks. 

According to Agian, the most commonly used solution – a metal plug to seal off the LAA – can actually cause its own clots known as device related thrombosis (DRT). Furthermore, he says, the metal plug is not a permanent solution for many as about 25 percent of these procedures carried out result in some leakage of the blood back into the LAA.

“The latest research is showing that even a tiny flaw can potentially create problems even one or two years after the procedure,” Agian says. 

The other solution – a blood thinner that prevents clots from forming – brings with it its own complications as clots are what stops a person from experiencing dangerous blood loss from a simple cut or scratch. And this danger, says Agian, means that around half of AF patients are not eligible for such medication. 

“We are not using any device at all,” he explains. “We are just manipulating the tissue itself in order to close the opening [to the LAA].” 

The procedure involves inserting a small catheter into the atrium by entering the femoral vein through the groin, then up into the heart. The patient is fully anesthetized for the 30-minute procedure and can go home the following day. 

The catheter contains a vacuum grip that latches onto the edges of the LAA and pulls it back into the atrium.

“Imagine you are holding a sock and inverting it,” says Agian. 

Once the LAA has been drawn into the atrium, the connection point is ligated (closed off) with a suture. 

“At the end of the procedure, we don’t have this cavity at all,” Agian explains. “We do have a kind of bulge of inverted tissue inside the atrium. And we see that over time the bulge tissue is reducing its volume dramatically.” 

He says that five months after the procedure, the bulge has almost gone due to atrophy. 

“At the end of the day, you have kind of a new heart without the LAA and with only small scar tissue where the appendage was, which doesn’t affect the functioning of the heart,” he says. 

The initial concept for the unique procedure came almost a decade ago from Prof. Leonid Sternik, the head of cardiac surgery at Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest and world-famous hospital, who specializes in atrial fibrillation surgery.

He carried out the procedure twice during open heart surgery, without the catheter stage, as a secondary treatment. 

Two years later in 2018, neither patient had suffered any cardiac issues or a stroke. Or Yehuda-based Append Medical was then created by its founder and CSO Zachi Berger,  and licensed the procedure from Sheba. The company then developed the catheter stage of the procedure, ruling out the need for majorly invasive surgery. 

“It is completely permanent and completely safe,” Agian says. “We are leaving no implant behind in the heart; it’s based on the native tissue itself.”   

Append is part of MEDX Xelerator, a Tel Aviv-based incubator for medtech startups, and has completed two successful rounds of fundraising. 

The final stages of development for the procedure were completed about 18 months ago, and the first clinical trials in humans involving 15 patients began in the past few weeks at a medical center in Prague. 

The trial will take six months and the company then plans to carry out a more extensive trial in the US by the end of the year, in order to obtain approval from the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  

“This is really part of the new generation of left atrial appendage closure,” Agian says. “There are the current solutions with the metal implants and Append belongs to the next generation of this treatment.” 

The post New Procedure Cuts Stroke Risk For Patients With Irregular Heartbeat appeared first on NoCamels.

While there is an exceptionally large representation of Israeli Arabs in the medical sector, few of them had previously been involved in innovation, explains Shai Policker, CEO at MEDX Xelerator, which was behind the creation of NorthMed last year.  

The young innovation hub, he says, aims to rectify that, hopefully bringing new ideas and creativity in the field to the table. 

“You have a very large pool of very capable human resources that is underutilized by far [in] medical high tech or medical innovation,” he says. “We think we can find great people there who are right now underutilized.”  

In fact, Policker adds, the northern town of Sakhnin – home to the fledgling hub and sandwiched midway between Haifa and Tiberias – includes “the largest concentration of medical doctors in Israel per square mile.” 

He attributes this partly to the fact that there are “quite a few hospitals” in northern Israel, including the well-respected Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa and Poriya Medical Center in Tiberias.  

NorthMed started out as a branch of MEDX, opening in late March 2023, but soon became its own entity, Policker explains.  

The new plan was for it to be an innovation center that fostered new developments in the medical field. 

“Our initial approach was opening a branch in order to try to find the innovators,” he says. “We joined forces with the Portland Trust, which is a [UK-based] philanthropic organization, and also some of the hospitals in the north.” 

From there, they successfully applied for a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority, the branch of the government dedicated to promoting the nation’s tech sector,  to create a medical innovation center for the Arab population. 

At that point, MEDX realized the potential of such a center and decided to widen its remit. The IIA grant allowed them to hire a full team to staff the center, who began working with entrepreneurs on venture creation, mentoring innovators from the Arab sector and collaborating with the local hospitals. 

Today, Policker says, the hub is working with what he calls “very good partners.” 

Rami Shinnawi MD, NorthMed’s chief technology officer, has strong ties to the local medical world. He is a cardiology fellow at Rambam as well as a lecturer in medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, which is also located in Haifa. 

An experienced entrepreneur in his own right, Shinnawi is working with young innovators, providing them with technological support for what it takes to create a medical product, Policker says. 

And despite being only open for around one year, Policker says that there are already medtech companies that grew through NorthMed that are making a name for themselves. 

Among them is Swift Duct, which answered the problem of navigating correctly to insert a tube into the bile duct – a challenging medical procedure whose difficulty of execution can lead to complications. 

Another innovator, Policker says, is currently developing a drug delivery system via the eye, with technical help from Shinnawi. 

“He had a very basic clinical unmet need and some thoughts about how to implement it, but he’s not an engineer,” Policker explains. “So he connected through NorthMed with Rami, and together they kind of put together the engineering aspects of the project.” 

The innovator has now received a small grant from the IIA and is now creating a prototype. 

“This is [becoming] a real adventure,” Policker says.

The center also connects Israeli Arab innovators to Israeli Jewish veterans of the tech sector. Very often, Policker says, connections within the industry are created during military service, which most Israeli Arabs do not perform. 

“If we serve as a bridge, then maybe we can open that up,” he says.  

Ultimately, Policker states, the idea is to harness the talents of a sector whose members are just as creative and innovative as their Jewish counterparts. 

“We are there because we think we can find excellent people who will help us to create better companies,” he says.

The post MedTech Hub Fostering Israeli Arabs’ ‘Underutilized’ Creativity appeared first on NoCamels.

A newly developed implant that sits just under the skin on the leg is intended to dilate and enhance blood flow through those narrowed arteries with ultrasonic waves, allowing crucial oxygen-rich blood to reach the lower limbs and ease the pain.  

Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD) is a condition that restricts the flow of oxygenated blood from the heart to the legs, causing pain when exercising as the muscles do not receive sufficient oxygen for the motion – a disorder known as claudication. 

PAD is most commonly the result of narrowed or blocked arteries (occlusions) caused by a buildup of fatty deposits in the vessels known as atherosclerosis. And according to the American Heart Association, some 200 million people around the world are affected by PAD.  

The implant is the creation of nascent startup NovaPulse, an Israeli company founded last year under the auspices of the MEDX Xelerator incubator, based in the central city of Or Yehuda.

Once inserted in a simple procedure, the sensor inside the NovaPulse implant activates the sound waves as soon as the patient begins to move, MEDX Chief Technology Officer Gal Atarot tells NoCamels. 

“By applying ultrasound on a relatively large artery, the femoral artery [in the upper thigh] for example, the ultrasound generates a natural dilation of the vessel, which increases the blood flow,” Atarot explains. 

“This increases the blood flow to the leg and the patient can start to walk with significantly less pain; this is the goal of the device,” he says. 

“Think of it as a virtual stent.”

PAD patients often neglect their physical health, Atarot explains. They do not do much, if any, sport, and in many cases cannot work due to the pain of the condition. And at present, he says, the treatment is a drastic lifestyle shift or, in the worst case, surgical intervention. 

“They have leg pain and go to their physician [but with] the current standard of care, you can’t do much with this pain except – as the physician says – to start doing exercise, start walking, give up smoking or change their eating habits,” he says. 

The implant was developed as part of a “venture creation” program by MEDX with international medical companies.

“We don’t have competition,’ he says of the device. “The basic idea is novel.” 

What makes the implant unique, according to Atarot, is the fact that it can be activated on demand or via an app that is installed on the user’s phone, so that the ultrasonic waves are emitted should the patient feel pain even when at rest. 

And because it is connected to the cloud via the app, a physician can fully monitor the patient, helping them to have a more complete understanding of the impact of the implant on the artery, as well as the extent to which an exercise regime is being maintained. 

“The implant will have the potential to completely manage those patients, monitor them and follow their activity,” Atarot explains. 

The device is designed to avoid more serious medical intervention for patients suffering from PAD, who more often than not, Atarot says, are not in optimum health. 

“The most important thing is that this is a significantly less complex intervention, and we don’t touch the vessel itself; it’s all done from the outside,” he says. 

“We’re activating a natural mechanism of the vessel to expand itself, to increase the flow, [to cause] less pain,” he explains. “We are giving the patient the chance to do exercise and whatever needs to be done without pain.”  

The prototype device has undergone successful animal testing and early next year will be put through clinical trials at Sheba Medical Center, the largest hospital in the entire Middle East with a renowned innovation facility of its own. Bringing it to market, Atarot estimates, will take another couple of years at least and the plan is to seek approval from the US Food and Drug Administration. 

Ultimately, Atarot explains, a PAD patient who does not change their bad habits will end up with a much more severe and dangerous occlusion that will require intervention with a much more invasive procedure that surgically opens up the arteries. 

And, he warns, if the patient still does not take steps to improve their lifestyle and the pain persists, they will have to undergo another invasive procedure within a year or two as they experience restenosis – when an artery opened surgically returns to a narrowed state. 

“When the physician does a full intervention and goes into the vessel to open the occlusion, it’s a cascade of harming the internal part of the vessel and creating restenosis after you open it,” he says.   

“The idea of this implant is to break this vicious cycle.”  

The post ‘Virtual Stent’ Uses Sound Waves To Boost Leg Artery Blood Flow appeared first on NoCamels.

Kidney function is crucial to a person’s health. The main job of the organs is to filter the blood of toxins and remove waste products from the body, but they also create hormones that help regulate blood pressure, produce Vitamin D and even control the production of red blood cells.

This makes checking that the kidneys are working properly a crucial step in monitoring a person’s bodily functions, especially when they are in the ICU. And the amount of urine that is produced is a key method of checking how well the kidneys are working, potentially signaling an issue in different parts of the body even before other symptoms are clear. 

“[Urine production] is a vital sign that usually comes earlier than blood pressure or other vital signs,” says Dror Zerem, CEO of FIZE Medical, which makes the new device. 

“It tells the medical staff to see where the problem is. It’s not always in the kidneys; sometimes it’s in the heart that does not produce enough blood, so not enough blood is going into the kidneys.” 

The issue, says Zerem, is that urine production is not monitored accurately enough in ICU patients who are catheterized as a matter of routine. 

Instead, he says, healthcare professionals rely on infrequent measurements that do not present a true image of the functioning of the kidneys or the bladder. 

According to Zerem, about half of all ICU patients who were hospitalized with normal renal function will be discharged with some form of acute kidney injury. 

This is partly caused by poor fluid management, which he says is difficult to gauge due to the lack of accurate measurement of the fluid that the body expels. 

Most hospitals, Zerem says, only precisely monitor the amount of fluid that goes into the body – including medication that enters through an IV and can cause damage to the kidneys if not flushed through the system correctly. 

“You have to really manage the fluids and today managing the fluids is done manually [and via] trial and error,” he says. 

“You put in an IV for a patient, you let it stream [and] you think it’s good enough, but it takes about 30 minutes to one hour to see the output and understand if it is good enough or you have to change it.” 

But the FIZE device, he says, provides feedback within a few minutes or less, helping to make fluid management faster and more effective. 

The device is attached to the very tip of a patient’s urinary catheter – most commonly a Foley catheter that constantly drains the bladder- on the outside of the body, once the bladder has been emptied. 

Its proprietary AI sensor then registers every single drop of urine entering the bladder, down to the last microliter (one millionth of a liter). It works by registering the changes in pressure within the bladder as urine gathers inside it. 

“Every drop that comes from the kidney into the bladder, we measure it in real time,” Zerem tells NoCamels. 

“Since it’s a closed system – the bladder with the Foley catheter – every drop that comes into the bladder changes the pressure,” he explains. 

The urine is also measured when it is extracted via the catheter using a peristaltic (sterile) pump that is included in the device. 

All the related data is automatically sent to an ICU’s electronic medical record (EMR) for the patient, giving clinical teams up-to-date information that could indicate a crucial change in the patient’s status. 

According to Zerem, FIZE produces the only device that measures urine production as it happens inside the body and not what is removed from the bladder via the catheter. The other methods of measuring urine production take place “a long way from the kidneys,” he points out. 

He says that externally monitoring urine production also leaves room for “a lot of mistakes,” as the catheter can become blocked or even dislodged by the patient’s movements. (The sensor emits an alert when the catheter is blocked or comes free.) 

The FIZE method, Zerem explains, means that the urine can be constantly drained from the bladder, keeping it empty. This reduces the risk of a catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI), which the US National Center for Biotechnology Information says is the most common cause of hospital-acquired infection. 

The company, which is based in Modi’in Makabim-Re’ut, was founded in 2020 by its CTO Noam Levine, a specialist in designing measurement systems for fluid flow, after he was consulted by a physician friend about the difficulty in accurately gauging urine production. 

Zerem, who is a physicist by profession and had been working on defense projects, was drafted to help solve the problem. 

The device, Zerem says, is already in use in Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva and Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov) in Tel Aviv. A number of devices were also donated to Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, to help with the treatment of Israel Defense Forces soldiers wounded in the ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza. 

Zerem says the device is particularly useful in neonatal intensive care units, where babies only produce a very small amount of urine that would otherwise be hard to measure.  

In fact, he says, it has already received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration and completed a pilot at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.  

Nationwide, one of the largest pediatric hospitals in the United States, is set to begin using the device with its ICU patients next year.

Accurate monitoring of urine is even more crucial in pediatrics, Zerem explains, as the rate of acute kidney injury is higher than in adult ICU patients. 

He says that the defense projects he worked on would take years to complete, while the results of the FIZE device are clear and immediate. 

“We can visit the hospital, we can see what we’re doing, where we are helping, and more immediately than building a project for 10 years,” he says. 

“We want to make money like every startup company,” he admits. “But we think the effect we can have on the health of millions of people is really, really significant. It’s really one of the things moving us.” 

The post Monitoring Kidney Function With AI Sensor, One Drop At A Time appeared first on NoCamels.

That’s why he was shocked to discover that he had serious heart blockages in three of his arteries. None of his routine tests signaled that something was wrong, nor did the heart rate monitor that he wore every day give any indication. 

“I understood then that we were not monitoring our heart health in the right way,” Re’em tells NoCamels. 

Drawing inspiration from this experience, he teamed up with Dr. Menachem Genut of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Chemistry to establish the Yopi startup, with the intention of creating a new and more accurate method of monitoring heart health during a workout – specifically by using sweat, even in tiny quantities. 

The startup, which is based at Kibbutz Nir Am in southern Israel, spent four years developing a disposable sensor that analyzes potassium and other electrolytes in a person’s sweat as they exercise, in order to determine cardiorespiratory fitness – the body’s ability to supply oxygen to skeletal muscles.

The sensor, which is about the size of a watch, is placed in a band and worn around a person’s wrist as they train.

It measures the electrolytes and sends the data via Bluetooth to an accompanying app, which uses advanced algorithms to determine a person’s VO2 – the maximum amount of oxygen the body can absorb and use during exercise.

The sensor is capable of analyzing the user’s VO2 for 20 hours before needing to be replaced. 

And the greater your VO2, the more effectively your body can generate energy and the better your overall heart health, explains Re’em. 

The American Heart Association says that VO2 is a potentially stronger predictor of mortality than analyzing established risk factors such as hypertension, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and smoking. This is because low levels of fitness are associated with heart disease and some cancers. 

“When we get indications that something’s wrong with your heart, we can tell you: ‘listen, something is not working as it used to be and you should go for a check’,” Re’em says. 

The Yopi app also interprets the data it gathers to suggest which exercise is best suited for the user, based on their heart health data. 

Re’em says that currently the sole method of measuring VO2 is by donning specialized masks used only in physiology labs, sites that are both largely inaccessible and cannot supply a constant read of a person’s VO2 levels. 

He says the only other way to measure one’s heart health outside of a lab, clinic or hospital is through the use of a heart rate band, which he argues is an inaccurate indication of a person’s wellbeing. 

“A heartbeat is a complicated way to measure fitness,” he says. Even if you are in danger of dying, he says, you can still have a regular heartbeat. 

According to Re’em, Yopi is the first to measure VO2 through sweat and in doing so has created a uniquely accessible method of measuring heart health that doesn’t rely on the heart rate.

“Until today, there hasn’t been a sensor that can measure [electrolytes in] sweat,” says Re’em. 

“To develop such a tool, we had to face the huge challenge of understanding how to measure this,” he says. “And it really was a challenge.”    

The principles behind the sensor are based on two separate pieces of research: The first revealed that potassium levels in the blood correlate with levels of VO2; and the second showed that those potassium levels in the blood affect potassium levels in the sweat during training. 

“We understood from this research that there may be a correlation between potassium in the sweat and levels of VO2,” says Re’em. And it is the levels of VO2 that provide an insight into a person’s heart health.

The Yopi sensor also analyzes VCO2, the maximum amount of carbon dioxide expelled from the body during a workout. 

The app can then analyze the ratio between the VO2 produced and VCO2 expelled, known as the Respiratory Exchange Ratio. This is used to gauge a body’s metabolic rate and can help understand which food groups (such as fats and proteins) provide the most energy.  

“You’ll know what your body consumes during training and after the training, you can eat according to what you consume,” explains Re’em. 

This, he says, is why the startup is named Yopi – an acronym for “your own personal instructor.” 

Two years ago, Yopi received a grant from the Israel Innovation Authority, the branch of the government dedicated to promoting the high-tech sector, and plans on marketing its product in 2024. It will be a subscription-based sports product in which the user will receive an annual supply of 50 disposable sensors. 

And further down the line, Re’em believes that the sensor can be miniaturized and integrated into a range of smart watches. 

In addition to being a sports wearable, the startup wants its sensor to eventually be used for medical purposes.

As such, Yopi will soon be collaborating with Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot to create a “sweat bank,” which will investigate whether certain diseases such as cystic fibrosis can be diagnosed through perspiration. 

It also plans to complete the clinical trials that will make it eligible for US Food and Drug Administration approval as a medical product. 

Above all, Re’em explains, the company wants to help people be aware of whether they have an undiagnosed heart issue.  

“This idea is why we developed Yopi in the first place,”  he says.

The post Startup Helping You Get Heart Healthy By Measuring Your Sweat appeared first on NoCamels.

NexoBrid gel, made by Israeli company MediWound, is a clinically proven treatment made using bromelain and other enzymes, which while present in the entire pineapple plant are extracted from the stems that would otherwise be discarded. 

The salve circumvents the need for a complicated tissue removal procedure that often results in significant blood loss.  

The effects of bromelain were researched for years, but as the enzyme was known to evaporate easily, it previously was seen as unsuitable as a burn treatment. 

MediWound, however, found a way to isolate and dehydrate the enzymes, so that they were only activated once mixed with liquid and immediately applied to the skin.

Physicians simply apply the treatment topically to first- or second-degree burn wounds, which affect the first or second of the skin’s three main layers (epidermis, dermis and hypodermis). 

The enzymes then break down the damaged or dead tissue while preserving the healthy tissue surrounding it. The treatment itself usually lasts for four hours, depending on the scope of the burn wound.

“It’s an enzyme that eats whatever is not alive,” says Prof. Josef Haik, Director of the National Intensive Care Burn Unit at Sheba Medical Center, Israel’s largest hospital. 

“When the skin is burned, it essentially becomes dead tissue or a substance that the enzyme knows how to dissolve,” he tells NoCamels. 

Once the treatment has been completed, the wound simply needs to be wiped clean.

NexoBrid, which received US Food and Drug Administration approval last year, has been available for some time in Israeli hospitals. But the company says the treatment has seen an unprecedented surge in demand since October 7, when terrorists from Gaza rampaged through Israel’s southern border communities, killing 1,200 and wounding thousands more. 

Hundreds of people were admitted to burn units across the country due to the terrorists setting fire to their homes in order to force them out of their safe rooms.

“It’s hard to believe,” says Haik, adding that 250 people have been admitted to his department in the last seven weeks alone. 

The professor relates the story of a young couple and their 14-month-old daughter, who hid in their home for 12 hours as Hamas terrorists rampaged through their community. 

They had no choice but to exit after the terrorists set a car tire alight in their home, causing it to burn down. 

“It’s hard to even talk about,” says Haik.

All of the family sustained serious burns and were treated with NexoBrid, and are now recovering.

And because the attack happened on a Saturday, he explains, some religious victims had burn wounds caused due to damage to the tanks in their homes that automatically keep water heated throughout Shabbat. 

One child even had to be treated with NexoBrid over her entire body. 

There is one other enzyme, collagenase, that is also used in burn care. But MediWound says that this treatment is only active against collagen, which makes up a significant portion of dead tissues but not all of it. And unlike NexoBrid, collagenase can take several weeks to remove dead tissue from a burn site. 

Haik, who consulted on the early development of the ointment, says the introduction of the NexoBrid salve into Israeli hospitals has revolutionized the standard for treating burns. 

Hospitals would have to wait several weeks to determine how much of a burn wound would eschar, or dead and dried tissue, before operating to remove it. 

But this debridement surgery, Haik explains, commonly results in blood loss that in some cases can be fatal. 

Today, he says, the use of NexoBrid not only prevents patients from undergoing unnecessary surgery, but also helps physicians determine whether they need to operate after waiting just a few hours and not weeks. 

Some patients, however, do need to undergo a skin graft even after the salve treatment, as their burns are too deep and would take too long to heal unaided. 

Haik says that at Sheba, NexoBrid is today the preferred treatment and surgery only considered in severe cases. 

“Now in wartime, it saves us from having to do multiple surgeries,” he says. 

“It changed our way of seeing burns and treating burns.”  

The post Israeli Hospitals Treating Burn Victims With Pineapple Protein appeared first on NoCamels.

Sheba Medical Center, located in the central city of Ramat Gan, has expanded its already extensive rehabilitation facility for this purpose – adding another 36 beds and this month even holding a demo day to showcase new rehabilitation technologies. 

Out of the 80 companies who submitted rehabilitation proposals for the expanded facility, eight were chosen to demonstrate their solutions on the day. 

“Rehabilitation will be one of the major medical challenges that Israel faces in the coming years as a result of the current war,” said Prof. Gabi Zeilig, director of Sheba’s Department of Neurological Rehabilitation and National Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Unit, of the new program. 

“We will be infusing the department with new technology, building on our extensive experience rehabilitating soldiers and enabling our clinical team to deliver the best outcomes,” he said. 

That new technology includes artificial intelligence, virtual reality and remote monitoring tools, which the hospital says will be added to current in- and outpatient treatments in order to increase the facility’s reach.

These technologies will be integrated into the daily routine of the rehab center, the patients and their families, Zeilig said at Sheba’s demo day. 

“We will be able to treat more people, broaden the options open to a person to manage alone, to look after themselves,” he said. 

“We are not talking about less staff; it is the same staff with a great deal more capabilities,” he added. “This is the plan that we are attempting to build here.” 

Zeilig’s message was one earlier delivered by Sheba’s Deputy Chief Transformation Officer Dr. Avi Tsur, who highlighted the intent to revolutionize the hospital’s rehab program for wounded troops by centering technology. 

“From the moment soldiers are admitted for rehabilitation we will be leveraging cutting edge technologies to support their recovery,” Tsur said. 

“This will enable us to maximize the quality of treatment, achieve even better outcomes with long-term success, while also allowing patients to receive rehab at home.”

The medical center, which is also the largest healthcare facility in the Middle East, has been listed by Newsweek as one of the world’s best hospitals for the past five years in a row. It invests heavily in healthcare R&D and technology, mainly at its onsite ARC (accelerate, redesign, collaborate) Innovation Center.

The startups chosen for demonstration covered a range of treatments, and included COGNIShine, which is designed for therapists in the field of cognitive, speech and language disorders, and REHABILITY, which creates virtual reality games for neurological and balance therapy.  

Tailored Treatment  

Also included in the eight companies was 6Degrees, whose wearable MyMove device transforms the movements of people with missing limbs, tremors or other motion-restricting issues into digital commands. 

The device looks like a watch and can be worn on any limb or even prosthetic. It uses an algorithm to learn the individual movements of each person within five minutes.   

Once it is calibrated to the user’s unique movements, MyMove connects via Bluetooth to any compatible hardware, such as a computer, gaming system or phone, and the onscreen display responds to the motion registered from the wearer. 

Where relevant, the screen will show a cursor, allowing the wearer to click, drag or even draw even with limited movement capabilities, 6Degrees co-founder and CEO Miri Berger tells NoCamels. 

The company takes its name from the physics term “six degrees of freedom,” which refers to the freedom of movement of a rigid body in three-dimensional space. 

Originally designed purely as assistive technology, the device has now been adapted for rehabilitation. 

“What we’ve created on top is a layer that is applicable for physical therapy,” Berger says.

In practice, this means that the algorithm not only calibrates according to the range of movements the user currently possesses. The system also tracks the progress the user has made in terms of movement capabilities, making motion-based commands incrementally more difficult to perform as the patient recovers. 

Berger gives the example of a shoulder injury that restricts arm movements. Initially, a slight arm motion would be enough to carry out a command such as a click, but as the algorithm monitors improving flexibility, even small changes, it requires a greater effort to achieve the same outcome. 

“Our system can show 2 percent more extension range than when you started,” she says. “You won’t necessarily feel that 2 percent incremental change… but we will record that.”  

As well as working with Sheba, the company is also in talks with healthcare providers in the US, including those that specialize in working with amputees, although it cannot divulge which. 

Indeed, Berger says that working with Sheba’s rehabilitation center led them to understand that the company can be most beneficial to people who are recovering from an amputation, in particular those suffering from phantom limb pain.  

This phenomenon occurs when the brain tries to send movement signals to a limb that has been lost, Berger explains. And because those signals cannot reach the missing limb, the brain translates them into pain signals.  

The conventional way to reduce this pain is by using a mirror to reflect the other limb that still exists, in an attempt to convince the brain that both are still present. 

But according to Berger, this treatment does not reduce the levels of pain as successfully as the 6Degrees therapy. 

The company’s unique virtual reality method involves placing its wearable device on the prosthetic, which translates on screen to an intact limb that is used to complete tasks or even play a game.

The wearable device will even replicate the sensations one would feel when making contact with an object. 

“You’ll kick a ball, and you’ll feel tremor in your left leg because of the device sitting on it,” Berger says. “You’ll hear it happen, see it happen. And so there’s a bunch of senses saying to your brain: your leg is there.” 

This method, Berger says, is more effective at reducing phantom limb pain than the mirror therapy. 

“People came in with pain above five out of a 10 scale, and left with pain from three to zero,” she says. 

“When it’s used as a rehab application, it’s challenging you to move constantly.” 

The post Israel’s Biggest Hospital Harnesses Tech As Tool For Soldier Rehab appeared first on NoCamels.

Thousands of people were wounded when Hamas terrorists from Gaza infiltrated into Israel’s border communities on October 7, massacring more than 1,400 civilians, including women, children and the elderly. The attacks were accompanied by a barrage of rocket fire across the country that has not let up in the almost two weeks since. 

And while the doctors of the Sheba Medical Center are used to treating millions of patients with diverse conditions every single year, many of their new cases have complex brain injuries that cannot be tended to by conventional means. 

The Center’s Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit, which normally treats patients suffering from strokes, aneurysms and brain bleeds, is now modifying existing medical techniques to cope with the new cases. 

“Each case is very unique and is very different from the patients that we usually treat,” Dr. Gal Yaniv, director of the hospital’s Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit, tells NoCamels.

Suffering from head trauma due to gunshot wounds, rocket shrapnel or falling debris, many of these patients have developed a brain aneurysm – an abnormal bulge in a blood vessel of their brains that is at risk of rupturing.

Brain aneurysms are usually the result of blood vessels weakening with age or a genetic defect, and are more common in people over the age of 40. If not detected in time, they may cause bleeding inside the patient’s brain, which can be fatal.

These new cases, however, are occurring in soldiers fighting on the frontlines and civilians in the south of the country who have been most impacted by the ongoing war.

Dr. Yaniv explains that unlike conventional brain aneurysms, these aneurysms are now appearing in small arteries that are so delicate that they can rupture during surgery.

He and his team have therefore modified the tools used to treat other vascular diseases that involve small blood vessels – such as coronary microvascular disease – in order to perform these time-sensitive operations.

“We’re probably one of the more experienced medical centers in Israel, but these are some of the most difficult aneurysm cases we have encountered,” explains Dr. Yaniv. 

“They’re much more dangerous than normal aneurysms, and we’re very confined by the way we can treat them,” he says.

“So we have been improvising during each case, and are trying to understand how we can treat this patient without causing them any additional damage.” 

Aside from its Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit, Sheba Medical Center has streamlined the process of hospitalizing and tending to patients in urgent condition, as the number of soldiers and civilians wounded by the ongoing war rises. 

The hospital has also integrated advanced artificial intelligence algorithms into its medical systems that are capable of analyzing X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds. They can also quickly flag brain aneurysms, as well as other serious conditions. 

These algorithms, which were developed by Israeli startup Aidoc, notify practitioners as soon as they spot a medical anomaly, and are much faster and more accurate than a radiologist.

Until now, staff at Sheba had to manually analyze the scans themselves, which Dr. Yaniv says has resulted in clinicians missing or delaying a diagnosis.

“This is extremely important because when you have such a huge flow of work both for the radiologist and the clinician – especially now – sometimes really serious pathologies can be missed, just because of the sheer amount of patients and scans,” says Dr. Yaniv, who is also the Chief Medical Officer at Aidoc. 

Due to the war, the Endovascular Neurosurgery Unit has seen a significant uptick in the number of patients it has had to treat. These AI tools have been crucial in treating these patients, as Dr. Yaniv says his team now has less time to treat patients who need care unrelated to the conflict.

“We’re used to treating emergencies, because we treat strokes and bleeds. But most of our time right now is dedicated to these trauma patients,” says Dr. Yaniv. 

“But like everyone in Israel right now, we’re trying to be busy and productive.”

The post Israel’s Top Hospital Innovates To Treat War-Related Head Trauma appeared first on NoCamels.

What Prof. Jacob (Yaqub) Hanna of the Weizmann Institute of Science and his team have created is not a viable baby, he tells NoCamels, but rather a model of an embryo mimicking the stage of development a fetus in utero would have reached by day 14. 

All of the actual development of a fetus happens in the first weeks, Hanna explains. After that, a pregnancy is “just growth,” he says. 

Because these first weeks are so integral to embryonic development, this is the period in which the majority of nonviable pregnancies fail. 

“Most of the developmental defects happen by week five,” Hanna says. “We detect them later, but they happen very early.” 

He explains that studying the early weeks of pregnancy is crucial to understanding these developmental defects, but most women do not even know they are pregnant at this stage. 

And even when they do know, Hanna says, “there is no ethical justification” for removing tissue from the embryo for research that would in any event require hundreds of thousands of samples. 

“One sample here, one sample there – although we are desperate, this is never going to be enough,” he says. 

It was the need to understand these crucial first few weeks of gestation that first led Hanna to build the model embryo using stem cells. The models can then be used to try to understand why defects develop and also to observe the impact of new medications and therapies on an embryo. 

The models are constructed in two ways: either by using tissue from embryos that were donated decades ago or by taking a skin or a blood cell and “erasing everything in it to go back to embryonic stem cell state.” 

The latter method was developed by Prof. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, and earned him a 2012 Nobel Prize. 

It is also the preferred method to construct the model, Hanna explains, as it contains the genetic DNA of the cell donor, particularly in cases in which the models will be used to develop organ tissue for transplantation. 

Hanna says that in human pregnancy, organ development – organogenesis – begins at day 15, and is expected to be completed by week eight.  

Tailor-Made Organs

Hanna explains that he and his team at the Rehovot-based Weizmann Institute are now working on a model embryo that replicates development at a later stage than the current 14 days, with the aim of generating organ tissue for transplantation. 

He clarifies that the process of growing any organ begins at day 15 and while it takes almost the entire pregnancy to fully complete, by day 40 “all the ingredients” are there. 

“Then you just wait for them to mature, proliferate, mature more. But all the cell types, all the layers of all the organs are there,” he says.

Hanna gives the example of a leukemia patient who is facing death because he cannot find a blood cell donor who is a match. 

A skin cell from that patient can be transformed into a naïve stem cell (stem cells that have not matured into a specific form) and from that a model embryo can be developed to 30 or 33 days, complete with bone marrow, where the blood cells are made, for transplantation. 

“We have his identical stem cells, can do a bone marrow transplant and save his life,” Hanna says. 

He believes this to be the best way to obtain all the different cell types that are needed by different patients. 

“Rejection is impossible because it is the same DNA [with] no cells from a donor and we save his life. That is our dream, and we think it’s feasible,” he says.  

And so convinced is Hanna that this is the future of medicine, he and several peers have founded a medtech company in this field, called RenewalBio.

Ethical Issues

Hanna is firm that the model embryo absolutely cannot grow into a viable fetus, and is incapable of feeling pain or approaching any form of cognitive development at all. 

“We call them developmental restricted cells,” he says of the cells used to develop the model. This involves removing a single gene so that “there is absolutely no neural tissue.” 

Do not assume that the model embryos are identical to human embryos, he stresses. “They’re not; there are differences.” 

He says that the team even sought counsel from local rabbis, imams and priests on the ethical aspects of the research. 

“This cannot be defined as a human being because it can never be born,” he says. 

Hanna draws a parallel between his work and IVF treatment, whose introduction in the 1970s was also met with questions and uncertainty. He explains that an embryo can only be implanted into the uterus when it is less than 60 cells, and by day 5, an embryo already comprises 70 to 100 cells. 

“It’s more of an aggregate of important tissue,” he says. 

According to Hanna, no other researchers are working on the same principles as him and his team, but he is definite that the process, particularly because of its sensitive nature, should be open for everyone to see and evaluate. The research was recently published in the Nature journal. 

“We report as soon as we have results; we actually want to hear back from the public,” he says. “We want the public to know that nothing is done in the shadows or the dark.”  

The post Scientists Grow Model Embryo In Lab, Without Egg Or Sperm  appeared first on NoCamels.

And for these babies, every day of proper development is crucial. 

Elgan Pharma says that the preemies who were given its unique therapy reached the ability to absorb all the needed nutrition via their digestive tract and have the central line (a catheter inserted through a vein in their chest) removed significantly faster, in an average of 10 days instead of 15.  

Premature babies are generally born with digestive tracts that are too underdeveloped to break down and absorb nutrition on their own. 

These babies are both tube-fed and given a catheter through a vein in their chest or umbilicus, so that nutrients can be delivered directly to their bloodstream. 

But this places the immunocompromised infants at risk of complications, including the life-threatening illness necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). This disease can cause a major inflammation of the intestine, lead to necrosis of the colon and intestine and even leave babies permanently disabled. 

Elgan’s ELGN-GI treatment is administered orally to the preemies while they are still being tube-fed in order to develop their digestive system more quickly and reach a stage where they can absorb nutrients unaided.

“Part of the reason we founded the company was to figure out if there was a way to help preterm infants to transition faster to a normal functioning digestive system and thrive,” Miki Olshansky, founder and CEO of Elgan Pharma, tells NoCamels.

“And this is exactly what our drug does.”

Elgan – an acronym for Extremely Low Gestational Age Neonates (babies born before the 32nd week of pregnancy) –  is now planning to launch its final clinical trial of the therapy at the end of the year, a necessary precursor to receiving regulatory approval from the United States’ Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  

The trial, taking place at more than 30 health centers in Israel, Europe and the US, will include 400 preterm infants born in the 26th-32nd week of pregnancy. A parallel trial will study the impact of the therapy on 60 babies born before completing the 26th week of pregnancy.

Key Ingredient For Life

Insulin is a hormone produced naturally in the pancreas by most people, but it has other important roles such as stimulating a baby’s digestive tract to function after birth.

It is the key ingredient in the company’s medicine for infants. And, according to Elgan, by giving it orally it also aids in the growth and function of the gastrointestinal tract (GI) to compensate for early delivery. 

In fact, says Olshansky, preterm babies are underdeveloped when they are born because they miss out on the insulin normally produced in the GI tract when their mother is in her third trimester of pregnancy. 

And in the first several days following the birth of a baby, a mother’s milk also has plenty of insulin to help her newborn’s GI tract quickly mature. However, in the case of premature babies, it is not enough to help the digestive system develop to the point where a feeding tube is not needed. 

Elgan says its insulin-based medication compensates the baby for the critical GI development it did not receive in utero.

“Our treatment really harnesses nature’s solution for getting the GI to work well and function,” says Olshansky.

“We take insulin, just as it is found in mother’s milk – and we formulate it in a way that it is dissolvable and stable – so that preemies can receive it orally.”

Olshansky says that premature babies cannot simply be given injectable insulin, as these jabs include stabilizers not approved for infants’ oral intake by the FDA. The drug is also incompatible with the nutrition the preemie receives through a feeding tube, due to its acidity. 

Most importantly, currently approved insulins are injectables indicated for the treatment of diabetes and are not approved for any other condition and cannot be administered in any other way.

According to Olshansky, developing the treatment was a challenging task that few other companies worldwide have ever tackled, to the point that Elgan has no natural competitors. 

In fact, she says, the last time a drug was approved for use specifically for neonates was in 1991.

Neonatal intensive care units are extremely stressful, she explains, and any drug developed for premature babies “has to be perfect.”

And, Olshansky says, Elgan’s results speak for themselves. In a clinical trial, highest-risk preemies who ingested this medication were 80 percent less likely to develop necrotizing enterocolitis – a response unseen with any other drug tested, according to the company.

Elgan was founded in 2018, but research on using insulin to promote a preemie’s development dates back over 20 years and was conducted by two members of the company’s advisory board: Prof. Naim Shahadeh of Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, and Prof. Raanan Shamir of Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva, who first tested their theory on rats. 

After publishing numerous studies proving the efficacy of insulin in animals, they founded the company with Olshansky. 

Elgan took its first steps as part of NGT, then an incubator for early-stage healthtech startups that encouraged Arab and Jewish entrepreneurship and today a VC fund.

The company is based in Nazareth, where it continues to develop its products in the effort of solving prematurity’s highest unmet medical needs. Elgan was most recently awarded a $2.5 million grant by the European Innovation Council (EIC) to support its final clinical trial.

“There’s a lot of hope that this drug will have a huge impact on the outcome of these babies,” says Olshansky. “And we’re proud to be the ones spearheading the field.”

The post Insulin-Based Drug Gives Preemies A Fighting Chance appeared first on NoCamels.

Israeli biopharma company Pluri, which is developing the jab, says it could potentially be administered to first responders following a nuclear meltdown, mitigating the deadly effects of radiation exposure even before they arrive at the site. 

Exposure to high levels of radiation can harm a person’s ability to produce red and white blood cells and platelets – the key ingredients for the body to heal itself – and impair organ function.

The stem cells that form the basis of the Pluri injection, however, boost the production of white and red blood cells and platelets, creating an optimum environment for recovery from the radiation exposure. 

“Once the cells are injected into the muscle, they start to sense the environment, and respond by providing the body with the building blocks it needs in order to recover,” Yaky Yanay, CEO and president of Pluri, tells NoCamels.

Initial studies of the injection found that animals exposed to radiation and then given the jab were over three times more likely to survive than the animals who did not receive the treatment after exposure. 

Furthermore, animals dosed prior to radiation exposure were 18 times more likely to survive, the researchers found. 

Each vial created by Pluri can contain up to 100 million stem cells. According to the company, all the physician needs to do is inject them into the patient. 

Miracle Cells

Stem cells have unique properties that make them ideal for use in medical treatments. Not only do they have the ability to change form and function (known as cellular differentiation), they can also inhibit tumor growth, enhance or suppress the performance of the immune system (known as immunomodulation) and repair damaged tissue.

Pluri’s treatment is created by placing the stem cells inside bioreactors – tanks that provide an ideal environment for them to proliferate and that can grow up to 40 billion cells at a time. 

The cells are “fed” a liquid rich in glucose, amino acids and other substances in order to remain healthy.

Pluri also promotes cell proliferation by imitating the most suitable environment for placenta cells: the human body. They do this by tweaking factors in the bioreactor such as temperature, pH and the combination of gases present. 

“The idea behind our technology was to build a system that mimics the human body – the most complicated, amazing control system – because we believe that it is the ideal way to grow cells,” says Yanay. 

“What we learned is that these systems are extremely efficient for cell growth. It’s actually so efficient that from a single placenta, we can get enough cells to treat more than 20,000 patients.” 

The placentas are only donated by women who experience full-term delivery. Yanay calls this a “very straightforward process,” which has already been approved by the US Food & Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and the Pharmaceutical Division of Israel’s Ministry of Health. 

Stem cells found in placenta have been shown to improve the quality of life for patients with spinal cord injuries or multiple sclerosis, among other disorders. 

Pluri is now proving that the cells may have a similar impact on radiation poisoning. 

Radiation harms a cell’s DNA, causing it to prevent reproduction, explains Pluri’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nitsan Halevy. This means that the body does not create enough red and white blood cells and platelets – among other cells – to remain healthy. 

“This is the acute damage that radiation does,” she says. 

A New Mission 

Pluri has been treating various conditions with its cell treatment since 2001, including muscle regeneration for patients following hip fracture surgery and Graft-Versus-Host Disease – when the immune cells of transplanted tissue attack a patient’s own tissues.

It was only after witnessing the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan that the company thought to apply its technology to radiation poisoning. 

“We saw that nuclear meltdown is something that can happen anywhere,” says Yanay. “That time it was Japan, but Europe is full of very old reactors too.”

After a discussion with a hematologist at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, the team learned that placenta-derived stem cells were suitable for radiation treatment.

At present, there are no other treatments for radiation poisoning that use stem cells taken from a placenta. 

And while the two primary treatments in existence both – like Pluri – encourage the production of white blood cells, the company says its cell-based treatment is unique as it also stimulates the production of platelets and red blood cells.

The Haifa-based firm has signed a three-year, $4.2 million contract with the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to further develop its treatment.

Pluri hopes that the contract will ultimately lead to the purchase of the therapy by the US Strategic National Stockpile – the country’s repository of critical medical supplies – as a countermeasure for radiation exposure.

“Life on Earth begins and ends with cells,” says Yanay. “Our job is to explore and to use the power of this microscopic universe to create products that support the wellbeing of humanity.” 

The post Stem Cells Jab Could Be Key To Defeating Radiation Poisoning appeared first on NoCamels.

A MedTech company in Israel has created a contactless, robotic device to ensure that the hemodialysis process runs as smoothly as possible – without a very common side effect that can disrupt treatment and threaten the health of the patient. 

Hemodialysis uses a machine to clean waste from a person’s blood when the kidneys can no longer do this vital job, but the way in which the machine accesses the blood can cause its own set of medical issues.  

The human kidney, which is roughly the size of a computer mouse, filters the blood in the body every half hour. Without that process – or the medical alternative – a person is at elevated risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and even stroke or death. 

Each hemodialysis treatment takes around four hours, three to five times each week, with access to the blood gained through a surgically created portal, called a fistula, in the patient’s arm. 

To create the fistula, the patient must undergo vascular surgery to connect an artery to a vein, explains Shai Policker, veteran medical entrepreneur and board member at PatenSee, the startup behind the innovation. 

Invasive surgery aside, Policker tells NoCamels, each fistula takes several months to “mature” and be ready for use in dialysis. Those fistulas, he says, are the lifeline of the dialysis patient. 

The fistula is used to pump unfiltered, deoxygenated blood out of the body into the dialysis machine and the cleaned blood back in. But because it is artificially created, the fistula is vulnerable to a narrowing of the blood vessels that has no external signs, known as asymptomatic stenosis. 

PatenSee has developed a contactless, portable device that uses AI to inspect the ongoing condition of the fistula and alert medical professionals to early signs of stenosis – allowing for preventive measures rather than corrective action once the blood vessels have already started to narrow. 

When stenosis occurs, the blood flow through the fistula slows, adversely impacting the pace and quality of the treatment, making the process more painful or even causing a dangerous blood clot. 

Without detection, stenosis can also cause the fistula to become completely blocked, rendering it useless and forcing the patient to undergo another round of painful surgery that requires days of hospitalization. 

“We are using veins as if they are arteries,” Policker says. “Sometimes it will block the fistula and the blood vessels within two or three months. Sometimes it can work well for a year or a year and a half and only then be lost. But in almost all cases something will happen. Something like 20 to 30 percent of patients will get some vascular access event within a year. So it’s a big issue.” 

While there are no immediate visible symptoms, trained medical personnel can manually check for signs of stenosis, a “look, listen and feel” process that monitors the flow of blood through the fistula and, according to Policker, takes just 10 minutes or so. 

But this is often not possible due to staffing constraints in a busy renal unit, especially in the United States where Policker says each clinic can treat up to 30 hemodialysis patients at a time. 

“It’s like a factory,” he says. 

Even when these checks do take place, they involve physical contact with a painful area in an immunocompromised patient, putting them at risk of infection. 

No Contact, No Risk 

PatenSee’s device, which is mobile and can be used anywhere, requires no physical inspection of the fistula and takes a fraction of time of the manual process.  

Policker says he became aware of the issue several years ago, and as part of his role as CEO of Israeli MedTech incubator MEDX Xelerator challenged entrepreneurs to present solutions to the problem. 

PatenSee came up with the idea of replacing the entire physical exam with a set of optical and sound tests carried out mechanically. 

The first part of the test is to create 3D imaging of the fistula, which involves analyzing its contours when the arm is in various positions. 

The second part is the use of a laser vibrometer, which Policker likens to an eavesdropping device used in spy movies. This device “listens” to the blood flow through the fistula on several frequencies. 

Both parts collate the results using AI and present an image of the state of the fistula that Policker says is at least as accurate as a manual check by a trained clinician. What is more, the machine can be operated by someone with minimal training, and the results sent for inspection by a physician.  

Should the examination reveal early stages of stenosis, the patient can be referred for a 20-minute procedure that reopens the fistula.

The device has undergone successful preclinical trials in an Israeli hospital and Policker says the company is now in talks with several large dialysis providers around the world, including in Europe and the United States.  

There is high demand from medical institutions around the world to host the clinical trials, he says. 

According to the International Society of Nephrology, more than 850 million around the world suffer from some form of kidney disease – twice the global number of diabetes patients. Of that number, up to 10 million need hemodialysis or a transplant. 

In the United States alone, around 800,000 people are living with renal failure, of whom more than half a million are receiving dialysis treatment. The American Kidney Fund lists renal disease as one of the top 10 causes of death in the US, leading to more annual fatalities than breast or prostate cancer.   

Policker says that the device could be used in the future to check for thrombosis (blood clots) in other parts of the body, but for now the focus is on fistula used in hemodialysis. 

There are other medtech companies looking for solutions to stenosis in fistulas, but Policker says that while a number of them are “reasonably good,” they are not in widespread use as they still involve touching the patient – risking infection and causing discomfort. 

PatenSee received funding from an incubator that got it through the development stage and initial trials, and is now raising additional funding from private investors to finance the clinical trials.  

He believes that the device should be ready to market within two years or so. While it will be initially pricey, he concedes, “there is an ability to take that hardware and make it very small and very cheap.” 

Acquiring approval from the US Food and Drug Agency (FDA) and its counterpart the European Medicines Agency (EMA) should be a “relatively simple regulatory process,” Policker explains, as the device requires no physical contact with the patient at all. 

PatenSee’s innovation, he says, “gets rid of those emergency life-threatening situations.” 

The post Robot Monitors Dialysis Patients For Signs Of Serious Side Effect appeared first on NoCamels.

This revolutionary method involves surrounding RNA, a molecule containing instructions for cellular behavior, with targeted lipid nanoparticles that send the treatment straight into the cancerous cells in bone marrow, known as myeloma.

Once inside those cells, the RNA molecules act to inhibit the growth of a certain protein, thereby effectively killing the cancer cells by preventing them from dividing.  

This is the same method of drug delivery as used in the COVID vaccines developed by pharma giants Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. In the case of the vaccines, the RNA recreated the spike proteins on the outside of the coronavirus in order to teach the immune system to produce antibodies to fight them. 

The development is the work of scientists at Tel Aviv University, led by Prof. Dan Peer, the head of the Nanomedicine Laboratory at the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research and TAU’s vice president of R&D, with PhD student Dana Tarab-Ravski. 

The researchers collaborated with counterparts at Rabin Medical Center in Petah Tikva, one of the largest medical institutions in Israel. The results were published in the Advanced Science journal. 

From COVID To Cancer

Peer tells NoCamels that the lipid nanoparticles act as a “GPS system” for the drugs to target myeloma. 

“We take exactly the same concept as the mRNA [a form of RNA] vaccines,” he says. “On the surface of those particles, we put the GPS system that when you inject it into the bloodstream directs it into the bone marrow. And within the bone marrow, we are going after myeloma cells.” 

Billions of new blood cells are created in our bone marrow every day, including red blood cells, platelets and white blood cells. Myeloma is cancer of plasma cells – the type of white blood cells that make antibodies to fight infection. 

Myelomas in bone marrow overwhelm the other cells there, and because they are closely connected to the blood that circulates throughout the body, can easily spread. 

“People with multiple myeloma suffer from severe pain in their bones, as well as anemia, kidney failure, and a weakened immune system,” said Tarab-Ravski. 

According to Peer, the new treatment destroyed 90 percent of myeloma cells in the lab and 60 percent of the cells in human tissue.

“The efficiency by which our system goes to the bone marrow, specifically to myeloma cells is very high. And before that, without this kind of a smart GPS system, maybe one percent would go to the bone marrow,” he says.

Ordinarily, Peer explains, when particles are injected systemically into the bloodstream, they end up in the liver, whose job is to clean the body’s blood.   

“What we wanted was to endow those lipid nanoparticles – with their RNA drug inside – with the ability to target the myeloma cells inside the bone marrow. This is the whole new thing,” Peer says. 

The targeted delivery system works by equipping the lipid nanoparticles with “a very selective marker” for the myeloma cells in the bone marrow, he explains. 

This involves engineering antibodies to place on the surface of the lipid nanoparticles that will attract them to the unique receptors on the surface of the myeloma cells. While healthy cells in the bone marrow also have these receptors, they are thousands of times more numerous on the myeloma cells. 

As such, the nanoparticles are drawn to the cancer cells and not the healthy cells around them.

“It’s very simple mathematics,” Peer says. 

Future Potential

The premise of the treatment was already being studied when the coronavirus pandemic hit in early 2020, but the rush for a COVID vaccine boosted the work “dramatically,” according to Peer. 

“A lot of money was pushed into the development,” he says. “People saw the engineering challenge here, to put together mRNA and lipids in a controlled manner.”  

In fact, he says, “COVID teaches us that it’s doable.” 

The therapy is still in pre-clinical trials and for now is planned exclusively as a blood cancer treatment, but Peer says that it could theoretically be used to treat forms of metastatic cancers that spread through the bloodstream. 

He warns, however, that penetrating solid tumors that appear in the organs is extremely difficult. Bone marrow is soft tissue, which makes it easier for the drug to reach the cancerous cells. 

Peer also says that the treatment could one day be used to create vaccines for cancers. 

“Unfortunately,” he says, “we are still not there.”

The post ‘GPS For Drugs’ Delivers Treatment Direct To Bone Marrow Cancer appeared first on NoCamels.

Now being tested in the preclinical stage, the drug uses the p53 protein, which suppresses tumors. The p53 molecules bind to damaged DNA and tell cells with irreparable DNA damage to go into apoptosis (cell death). This prevents cells with damaged DNA from grouping together and forming tumors. 

Israeli scientists Lana Volokh and Alex Tendler co-founded the startup (whose name derives from EXOsome PROtein THERapy) in 2017, to develop a drug using protein from chicken cells. 

They say there are no apparent side effects from the treatment and claim it could even replace chemotherapy, which is one of the most common cancer therapies. More than half of oncology patients worldwide were treated with chemo in 2018. 

Chemotherapy targets cancer cells to stop them from reproducing but healthy cells are also damaged during the process as the drugs cannot distinguish between them. This causes multiple negative side effects such as hair loss, intense nausea, anemia, and damage to memory and concentration. 

Tumor Terminator 

P53 was first discovered in 1979 when scientists noticed the protein sticking to infected cells and signaling antibodies to fight infection. In 1989, the gene that produces the protein was determined to be a tumor suppressant. 

Dr. Tendler claims nobody has succeeded in developing a therapy based on the p53 protein delivery until now. 

“Twenty years ago, it was discovered that when the healthy protein interacts with the p53 mutated cells, the mutated proteins prevent the healthy ones from working,” he tells NoCamels.

“We solve the biggest problem by the usage of protein from other species. We use the protein from chicken cells, which is proven to be able to perform its function in human cells, but not to the point where the mutated human proteins can prevent it from working,” he said. 

“We solved this problem by usage of xenogeneic protein (protein originating from other, non-human, species). We use the protein of chicken origin. We successfully demonstrated that chicken p53 protein is able to perform its anti-cancer function in human cells while it is not inhibited by mutated p53 protein.”

Dr. Volokh says nobody has previously considered using chicken protein. 

 “Our approach is distinct from all of the current companies in the active substance, how we deliver the protein, and how the whole product is going to look,” she says. 

“Chicken protein is similar enough to function in human cells but not to the point where the mutated protein molecules can prevent them from working,” Dr. Tendler explains. 

The two scientists decided to explore p53 protein as cancer treatment when they realized that even though the cornea (the outer layer of the eye) is continually exposed to UV radiation from the sun, it is extremely rare to see that part of the body stricken with cancer. 

“It turns out that there is a huge amount of p53 protein in the cornea, already packed in the nanovesicles released by corneal cells,” says Dr. Tendler. 

Nanovesicles are tiny sacs particles that transport materials in and out of cells. 

“Those vesicles are released by corneal cells into extracellular spaces, and circulate throughout the cornea. Those vesicles can even be found in tears. When there is a mutated p53 cell, it instantly gets healthy protein from the neighboring cells.  So this is a local defense mechanism against cancer.”

In fact, says Dr. Tendler, 60 percent of cancers are associated with mutation of the gene encoding the p53 protein. 

By delivering p53 proteins through extracellular vesicles, the healthy proteins can drive the mutated cells into apoptosis and restore the body’s natural defense mechanisms against cancer.

Based in Haifa, ExoProTher is currently funded by Israeli investing giants Israel Biotech Fund and Peregrine Ventures. 

In their preclinical trials, Drs. Tendler and Volokh say they were able to significantly prolong the lives of mice with tumors and substantially reduce metastasis (the spread of cancer cells throughout the body). They were also able to show that the drug has no toxic side effects. 

Furthermore, they say, their drug will be suitable for a range of cancers. 

“We have screened a lot of different cancers,” says Dr. Tendler. “We see the ability to affect and potential to cure very different cancers. Colon cancer, brain cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer.” 

Cost Effective

Dr. Volokh also believes ExoProTher’s protein therapy can drastically reduce the cost of cancer treatment, highlighting the price of therapies that are tailored to the patient’s own individual genetic makeup. 

“There are many therapies today where blood is derived from the patient and the doctors engineer the drug substance to match that particular profile of that patient, which means that the drug is not applicable to anyone else,” she says. 

“That’s what makes certain therapies so expensive. But in our case, the drug will be an off-the-shelf product ready for administration, applicable to almost every type of cancer where p53 function is affected. This fact will allow large-scale manufacturing of our substance and make the therapy affordable.  The vesicles can be administered through standard injection and also through inhalation.”

A 2019 study by the Mesothelioma Center found that over 60 percent of cancer patients in the US reported financial struggles following their diagnosis. In fact, the American Association for Cancer Research says that the annual cost of cancer care in the US will likely reach around $246 billion by 2030, a 34 percent rise since 2015.

Tendler and Volokh say their protein therapy could initially be used alongside other treatments, including chemotherapy, and eventually even replace them. 

“We expect synergy between chemotherapy and our treatment,” Dr. Tendler says. 

“Our drug will be able to sensitize the tumors to chemotherapy and reduce the amount of chemo drugs that the patients will need, thus reducing chemotherapy’s side effects. This will probably be the first step before it becomes a standalone drug.” 

Dr. Volokh says their goals for the rest of 2023 are to continue lab trials and ensure higher yield and reproducibility rates for the drug substance, which are important for mass manufacturing. 

“Actually, Israel has a very strong leadership position in all that is about the p53 protein. Israel has a very rich history of discovery and characterization of p53-related mechanisms. Our ambition is to develop a p53 targeting drug here in Israel and make p53 an actionable clinical target. That’s our vision,” says Dr. Tendler. 

“There is not a single drug yet like this. It has the potential to make a huge impact.”

The post New Protein-Based Cancer Drug Does Not Affect Healthy Cells appeared first on NoCamels.

Now an Israeli startup has developed an AI-based platform to help doctors diagnose patients with chest issues, accurately and in real time. 

Quai.MD seamlessly connects to a hospital’s Electronic Health Records (EHR) – the digital version of a patient’s medical history – and uses this data, along with triage assessments and expert opinions drawn from medical research, to propose the most likely diagnosis and best courses of action.

For although there are established medical guidelines to help determine and treat multiple causes of chest pain of varying degrees, ER physicians, who are often understaffed and under tight time constraints, can make mistakes in diagnoses.

A December 2022 study by the US Health Department found that more than five percent of patients experience misdiagnosis in American emergency departments.

But Shlomi Uziel, co-founder and CEO of Quai.MD, tells NoCamels that the platform gives doctors a clear set of steps to follow during the examination period.

“The application sits inside the EHR, and helps the physician determine what the next step is for each of those potential diagnoses until they reach the decision to ultimately admit or discharge the patient,” he says.  

“What we’re trying to do is help [physicians] align more with the best practices and protocols.”  

Uziel explains that every hospital has a list of the best practices that derive from general medical knowledge and research. And the failure of an ER physician to follow protocol, he says, can lead to one of two outcomes:

In the first instance, the physician suspects that the patient has a serious illness and admits them to the hospital, where they can potentially spend several days undergoing various tests only to discover that there is nothing wrong.

This phenomenon costs the US economy an annual $750 billion, according to private healthcare firm PinnacleCare.

The other situation, says Uziel, is that the patient is sent home from the emergency room without realizing that they have a potentially fatal ailment, which could have disastrous results.

Deep Learning Diagnosis

Quai.MD accesses and analyzes the patient’s initial ER assessment and their medical history, even as they are being seen by a physician.

The AI platform then generates several diagnoses, ranging from most likely to least likely, as well as the steps the doctor should take in order to eliminate each possibility.

Uziel gives the example of acute coronary syndrome – a range of conditions related to sudden, reduced blood flow to the heart, including a heart attack. In order to rule this out, he says, the doctor must order a blood test to check for troponin, a protein that is released into the bloodstream during a heart attack.

The Quai.MD platform, he says, can be used to order specific blood tests with just one click.

Should the doctor decide to admit a patient, Quai.MD would then generate a report of all the care the complete process of patient care – saving the doctor time and making it easier for the medical billing team to determine the patient’s insurance coverage for the services they received. 

Quai.MD is currently focused on diagnosing the various causes of chest pain, which Uziel says has around 60 potential diagnoses – including a handful that are among the riskiest of health conditions. 

Beyond possibly saving lives and preventing unnecessary healthcare costs, Quai.MD’s CPO Marcelle Kaspi explains that the technology may also eliminate the biases that some healthcare providers have towards certain groups among their patients. 

“We know that there’s a lot of sex-based, race-based, and socioeconomic-based biases in the healthcare system in general,” she says.

Research has shown, for example, that white medical students and residents were more likely to believe that black patients feel less pain and do not need the same levels of pain medication as white patients – even as recently as 2016.

Because Quai.MD’s artificial intelligence learns solely from medical journals and studies, as well as the patient’s medical history and treatments, it doesn’t hold the same implicit biases as doctors. This, Kapsi believes, could potentially solve this issue. 

The Ramat Gan-based company expects the platform to become operational in the emergency room at the Medical University of South Carolina at the start of 2024. The startup is currently collaborating with doctors from this hospital and from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in order to finish developing the app. It is also due to receive medical records from 10,000 patients to further train the AI. 

The Doctor Will See You Now

Quai.MD is not the only Israeli startup trying to improve doctors’ performances. Kahun allows patients to discuss their symptoms with generative AI, and provides their doctor with a summary of their condition and possible diagnoses before their real life consultation. And Navina uses AI to produce summaries of a patient’s medical history for doctors via a smartphone app. 

But Uziel says that what sets Quai.MD apart is that it is the only one that automates the entire clinical process, from initial diagnosis through to suggesting care and treatment options. 

Quai.MD, which was founded in 2020, has raised around $2 million thus far from venture capital firm Random Forest and seed-stage fund Labs/02. It is now announcing a new $2.5 million financing round led by Good Company, with the participation of two healthcare systems from the US as well as new and existing investors. 

Most recently, the startup was one of five finalists in the Asper Prize competition, which recognizes startups using innovative technology to create a global positive impact.  

Quai.MD was founded by Uziel, a former VP at multinational computational software company Cadence Design Systems; Prof. Chen Shapira, the former CEO of Carmel Hospital in northern Israel; and Dr. Golan Yona, a machine learning expert and former Cornell Professor at the Department of Computer Science. 

“We just wanted to do something that makes this world slightly better,” says Uziel.

The post AI Platform Helps Diagnose Chest Pain Swiftly And Accurately appeared first on NoCamels.

The creators of the drug, which is currently undergoing preclinical trials, say it could potentially be life-changing for people living with Alzheimer’s. 

The disease – the most common type of dementia, which affected up to 40 million sufferers worldwide in 2023- is known to have no cure. Furthermore, there are still no agreed-upon causes of the disease, even though it was first diagnosed in 1906.

The ailment breaks down the neural synapses – the channels through which neurons (nerve cells that send messages to the whole body) communicate in the brain. This atrophies key areas of the brain and ultimately causes a significant loss of brain functionality.   

The new drug from Herzliya-based startup MemoryPlus blocks two proteins in the brain from interacting and causing the breakdown of neural synapses, something which exacerbates memory loss. 

The development came after the researchers discovered high levels of PTEN, one of the two proteins, in the brains of late Alzheimer’s sufferers. 

A different protein, amyloid beta, is believed to be one the primary causes of Alzheimer’s, as it causes what is called amyloid plaque to build up in the brains of people with the disease. The plaque forms in the spaces between the nerve cells, which disrupts cell function in memory – and most treatments for Alzheimer’s focus on this plaque. 

MemoryPlus, however, focuses on disrupting the interaction between PTEN and another protein called PSD-95. 

The company was founded in 2018 by Dr. Shira Knafo of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Prof. Gal Ifergane, director of the neurology department at Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva; and Ben-Gurion University business school alum Ehud Netta. 

Two years earlier, Knafo’s Molecular Cognition Lab discovered that as well as causing cancer when it mutates, the PTEN protein also impairs brain functioning both when there is a surplus of it and when it interacts with PSD-95 in the synapses. 

“Until now, the PTEN protein was only known in relation to cancer. We found out it’s also doing something unrelated. It’s doing something to the brain function and plasticity and learning and memory,” says Knafo.

Knafo’s lab had examined the postmortem brains of people who had had Alzheimer’s disease and found high levels of the PTEN protein in the neural synapses. 

“When there’s too much of the PTEN protein, it becomes toxic to the synapses. What we saw is that in Alzheimer’s disease, the [surplus] PTEN protein enters the synapses and causes them to be much weaker. When they become weak, they can’t pass information that well, and then you see loss of brain function and memory because the synapses are considered to be the place of information storage.”

Furthermore, PTEN often interacts in the synapse with PSD-95, which is a scaffolding protein that helps relay information between the cell membrane and nucleus more quickly. 

Both proteins are important when functioning independently, but when they interact with each other, they can cause synaptic depression that leads to more memory loss. 

Knafo’s lab developed a peptide (the building blocks of proteins) that would interact with PSD-95 and thereby prevent PTEN from doing so. 

The peptide not only blocks the harmful interaction between PTEN and PSD-95, Knafo says, but it can also prevent the toxic buildup of PTEN and preserve the neural synapses and cognitive function. 

Drugs (such as memantine and cholinesterase inhibitors) are given to Alzheimer’s patients to boost messenger chemicals in the brain crucial to memory and learning, which helps reduce symptoms of the disease. However, Knafo says that unlike MemoryPlus’ treatment, these drugs cannot prevent the destruction of further nerve cells.  

Major pharma companies such as US-based Biogen and Eli Lilly are also developing new drugs for Alzheimer’s, but these treatments target amyloid beta and Knafo does not see them as competitors.

“It’s true that they got rid of amyloid beta, but they didn’t improve memory,” she says. 

“We are working on completely different aspects of Alzheimer’s. Amyloid beta can stay in the brain as long as we can bypass it. We are working on the synapses.” 

The peptide is administered orally and is currently undergoing preclinical trials in the UK, China, Hong Kong, and Israel. 

Knafo explains that peptides have the advantage of being able to target very specific proteins, which means that they tend to have less side effects. However, she says that peptides can be less stable and more easily degraded by enzymes in the blood.

The company is also looking at small molecules as a new way of delivering the treatment, after screening thousands of synthetic small molecules in a five-year long study with the University of Hong Kong. 

“Small molecules can enter the brain more easily, but they may have some side effects. We currently have five different synthetic small molecules that do the same thing as a peptide. Once we test them and find the right one, we will take it all the way to clinical testing.”

Both the peptide and small molecules would work in the same way, by binding to PSD-95. This would prevent PTEN from binding to it and damaging the neural synapses as a result.

“We’re not trying to cure Alzheimer’s yet, but improve the symptoms,” says Knafo. 

The post Protein-Busting Drug Could be New Era For Alzheimer’s Therapy appeared first on NoCamels.

An Israeli startup has created a therapeutic pillowcase embedded with silver ion and zinc compound, two metals whose healing properties, including for burns and bacterial infections, have been utilized by people for centuries. 

ONYX Radiance has developed two lines of skincare pillowcases: one infused with silver ion that is focused on rejuvenation and the other containing zinc compound for treatment. 

ONYX CEO and founder Galia Hirsch says she became aware of the health benefits of these natural minerals after her father underwent a major heart procedure. Although it was initially successful, he later developed an infection which doctors could not stave off despite months of treatment.

“Just a week before he passed away, they told us there was a hospital department for infections that had silver ion solutions that might help in his case,” she recalls. It was then that she began her research on ion solutions (ionic compounds such as salt that have been dissolved in water).

Silver acts as an extremely potent antibacterial and anti-inflammatory agent, so much so that no microorganism can survive when silver ions are present. And zinc is not only antibacterial but also antifungal, which helps protect against infections like athlete’s foot and eczema. 

Hirsch says people using the infused pillowcases have reported the alleviation of a variety of skin conditions, including acne. 

The pillowcases cleared the skin of various issues, including redness, wounds and irritations, she says. 

Hirsch chose pillowcases as she wanted to productively utilize resting hours for rejuvenation. And as powerful microbial agents, silver and zinc can treat the skin during sleep. 

By embedding the minerals inside a pillowcase, users can absorb these benefits while sleeping. 

The minerals in the pillowcases also create a bacteria-free environment and sterilize the sleeping environment, which improves sleep quality. 

While there are other companies that produce smart textiles using silver ions, ONYX says it is the first to incorporate them into fabrics in such high concentrations and the first to use an exclusively zinc compound in its products. 

That compound is currently undergoing clinical trials at the lab of Prof. Ofir Artzi, head of the Center for Aesthetic Dermatology at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. Hirsch says this is so that the pillowcases can be introduced into Israeli hospitals, backed by science.

Multipurpose Metals

Both silver and zinc are common additives in skincare serums and oils due to their rejuvenation properties, which Hirsch says are also a benefit of her products.

“Regarding the line of silver ion pillowcases, it helps rejuvenate wrinkles, the texture of the skin, the firmness, even in pigmentation,” Hirsch tells NoCamels. 

The zinc compound cases are designed for people suffering from skin conditions like acne, which, Hirsch says, satisfied users have called “life-changing.”

Users of the pillowcases who suffer from acne see results in up to two weeks, she says, explaining that the mineral balances out the natural oiliness of the skin. This improves skin texture, combats future outbreaks, and even heals old acne scars. 

According to Hirsch, the pillowcases can also boost hair growth and recovery. She cites the case of a client who was left with a bald patch on her scalp following a very severe car accident. 

After using the ONYX pillowcase for five months, Hirsch says, the woman called her to report hair growth on her bald patch for the first time in 20 years.

Zinc supplements are often recommended for hair loss and scalp treatment, as the mineral is essential for skin health and protein production. Hair loss is actually a symptom of people without enough zinc intake. 

Based in Tel Aviv, Hirsch started the company in 2015 with no external capital. After five years of research and development funded with personal resources, the startup began selling the pillowcases in 2020. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit soon after, Hirsch saw it as an opportunity to add face masks into the line. 

“During coronavirus, people had a lot of issues with their skin. With our pillowcases and face masks, people saw results in up to two or three days,” Hirsch says.

The company has since expanded their product line, adding head wraps, hijabs, and even shirts – all infused with silver ion or zinc compound. The products are available at cosmeticians in Israel or online. 

Hirsch is also hoping to expand her customer base to our furry friends with a pillowcase line specifically for animals using the same silver and zinc solutions. The line can help with allergic reactions that affect skin and fur and is set for launch in the next half year. 

“You sleep like royalty on it,” says Hirsch of her pillowcases. “It’s comfortable and breathable. It’s amazing.” 

The post Metal-Laced Pillowcases That Care For Your Skin As You Sleep appeared first on NoCamels.

Strokes are most commonly caused by a clot blocking the essential supply of blood to the brain, and according to the World Health Organization are the second leading cause of death and the leading cause of disability across the globe. 

Over 100 million people have experienced a stroke worldwide, with one in four adults experiencing one in their lifetime. And for 50 percent of them, that means some form of lasting disability. 

Avertto says its StrokeAlert device is the first of its kind, using cutting-edge pulse wave analysis technology to monitor changes in the blood flow to the brain and alert for a potential stroke. 

The company says it is about prevention, shifting from care to cure. Treatment is effective if given in time. But, for the vast majority of people it arrives too late. 

Preemptive steps and timely action is essential for recovery, and the current main clinical treatment for strokes is only provided after the event. This includes blood thinners and invasive surgical procedures to remove blood clots from your arteries.  

“All the current treatments are based on clinical signs,” Avertto’s Chief Business Development Officer Limor Prigan tells NoCamels. These signs include facial drooping, arm weakness on one side and speech difficulties.

“You have to understand that once you have a clinical sign, it’s already too late. And then we’re running against time,” says Prigan. 

Avertto’s device uses sensors placed over the carotid arteries, the two major blood vessels on either side of your neck that provide the blood supply to your brain.

A lower blood flow level indicates potential blockages in the carotid arteries. The device’s AI-based alert system detects these changes and within seconds notifies the wearer, first responders and healthcare providers. 

Instant Alerts

According to the company, this is the first system to monitor blood flow, detect a change and issue a timely alert via continuous monitoring sensors linked to SaaS (software as a service)-based solutions.

The pulse wave analysis technology features sensors that first measure a user’s baseline blood flow levels. The sensors measure your levels every 2.6 milliseconds, and the data is transmitted to a smart phone app that will display one of three colors to the user. 

Green means healthy levels; yellow means that the data is still being assessed; and red means high risk of a stroke. When the app turns red, the alert is sent out within seconds. 

“The unique value proposition of Avertto is the combination between sensors, algorithms, user interface, and clinical management,” says Prigan. “And of course, [this is an] untapped business opportunity because there is no solution tackling a pre-stroke situation rather than post-stroke clinical signs.” 

The race against time was the reality that Prigan faced when her mother suffered her first stroke at the age of 62.  

Prigan was sitting for her final exams at The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa when she received the news about her mother..  

“And from this moment on, I changed her diaper for the next 10 years. And the next one after 10 years was devastating,” she says of the stroke that led to her mother’s death. “I realized that there is no proper solution for early detection or prevention.”

Prigan strongly believes that Avertto’s early stroke detection and rapid stroke treatment could save the lives of millions of people who had similar experiences to her mother. 

Next Steps

Avertto was recently named rising startup of the year and won the first place prize of 100,000 shekels (approx. $28,000) in Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Asper Prize competition. 

The Aviram Awards – a competition to reward startups and entrepreneurs changing the day-to-day reality in the Middle East and North Africa – also placed Avertto in the top five finalists out of 780 competitors from the region. 

“The treatment is good if you get it in time. That’s exactly what Avertto is trying to bring, our unique value proposition and what we do today, always dealing with the preventive rather than looking at the clinical signs,” says Prigan. “Early intervention, that’s the future of preventive care.”

The company, which was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Aderet in central Israel, has finished the proof of concept stage. It is now conducting a double blind study to obtain proof of validation in order to be used in the ER and during surgery. 

Eventually, Avertto plans to move into the home arena and is working on a smaller, insertable prototype of the device. 

“We know that the new standard of care will be the insertable,” says Prigan. “Nobody will be sent home without Avertto.”

The post Wearable Device Predicts Stroke, Saving Crucial Treatment Time appeared first on NoCamels.

Neither Alzheimer’s (up to 40 million sufferers worldwide in 2023) nor Parkinson’s (8.5 million sufferers worldwide in 2019) has a specific method of diagnosis or a real cure. 

Early detection is crucial for both diseases, however, as treatments to slow the progression of both are more successful the sooner they are administered. 

Current diagnosis for both diseases relies on a review of a patient’s medical history, neurological and physical examinations, cognitive and functional assessments and brain imaging. 

Aviv Mesika, a graduate student at Bar-Ilan University’s Faculty of Medicine, says his LacriScan diagnosis test uses tears, which are both easily accessible and intrinsically linked to the central nervous system.  

Because of these two factors, “we can identify a component in the tears that reflects processes in the brain, and in the early stages before the patient with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s develops clinical symptoms,” Mesika tells NoCamels.

While there is currently no cure for the diseases, swift detection can allow for more effective management of them, he says. And by improving the treatment, so too can they improve the quality of life of the patient and the family. 

“Therapy in late stages is ineffective,” he says. 

The diagnostic process itself is based on the commonly used Schirmer Test that monitors tear production, which involves inserting a paper strip inside the lower eyelid to gather the fluid. 

Once collected, the tears undergo Mesika’s patented analysis, looking for biochemical markers (hallmarks) of the two diseases. The two ailments, he explains, “have a shared identity.”

This shared identity can also manifest in similar symptoms, such as cognitive decline (although this is more commonly associated with Alzheimer’s), reduced coordination, sleep disruption, memory loss and psychotic indicators like delusions, paranoia, and hallucinations. 

Practical Pathology

Mesika was already working with the use of tears as a diagnosis tool during his research into a rare genetic disorder called NGLY1 deficiency, which has less than 100 cases worldwide, but five instances in the same family in northern Israel. And one of the symptoms of NGLY1 deficiency is alacrima, or abnormal tear production. 

At this point, he says, he was inspired to develop the same method of gathering tears to test for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, given the close connection between tears and brain functioning. Mesika’s innovative diagnostic process was developed under the supervision of Prof. Tzipora Falik-Zaccai and Dr. Golan Nadav of Bar-Ilan University.

While similar tests for neurological diseases using tears have already been developed, Mesika says that his method differs in two ways: a more sensitive test response and analysis that looks for multiple brain chemical markers of the two diseases. 

Mesika was one of a handful of outstanding medical students to be selected for the 2023 National BioInnovators scholarship run by Israeli pharma giant Teva. The program, which includes a $10,000 grant and mentoring from industry leaders, was this year awarded to doctoral students and post-doctoral trainees whose research focused on brain disorders. 

The objective of the program, which began in 2020, is to teach its participants to transform their ideas into viable, innovative businesses that solve a medical issue. Mesika’s test has already landed him a spot among the final 10 candidates in the students’ R&D competition and he hopes to claim first place. 

The test is still very much in the initial stages of development, and Mesika says there are still some outstanding questions that he must answer, such as how early in the development of the disease the test can successfully diagnose patients. Clinical trials, he says, will be carried out in collaboration with medical centers in Israel.  

Mesika envisions his test as becoming a commonly used weapon in the arsenal to battle both Alzheimer’s and Parkison’s. 

“The idea is to develop a non-invasive screening test for early identification of a predisposition,” he says. “It could be like the screening test for breast cancer or colorectal cancer.”

The post Tracking Your Tears In Early Test For Alzheimer’s And Parkinson’s appeared first on NoCamels.

People with these conditions struggle with wounds that heal easily in others, leaving them vulnerable to serious infection that in some cases can be fatal. 

Now an Israeli startup has created a “bandage” made from your own blood to heal these potentially life-threatening wounds that the body cannot fix by itself.

The solution devised by MedTech company RedDress stimulates the healing process, all by using your own blood to make a clot outside the body.  

People with diabetes, a condition that the World Health Organization says affects more than 400 million across the globe, can experience poor blood circulation, meaning that the body’s blood cannot deliver the nutrients needed for cell regrowth in wounded areas.  

Blood clots are the first line of defense when our bodies suffer a wound or trauma that causes bleeding due to a breach of a blood vessel. Clots are a gel-like substance formed by coagulating blood that stems the bleeding, which is why you do not suffer massive blood loss after a minor injury like cutting your finger with a knife. 

Clots also have other jobs. The second one is releasing hormones to tell the body that there has been an injury that needs healing. The body knows that in order to heal the wound, it needs to send in white blood cells to regenerate the blood vessels.

The third job is to provide a kind of “scaffold” to support the healing process carried out by the nutrients as they regenerate damaged cells. 

But when your blood flow is restricted by disease, creating a clot and sending those white blood cells and other nutrients to the site of the wound can be problematic. 

‘Tricking’ The Body Into Healing

The “ActiGraft” treatment takes a very small amount of your blood to create an external blood clot using a patented method, RedDress CEO Alon Kushnir explains. The process requires about 20ml of blood, compared to the 500ml that is an average blood donation.

The clot is created inside a small, transparent case by mixing the blood and RedDress’ unique formula. After several minutes, the mixture forms into the clot and can be removed from the case.

The newly created clot is then applied directly onto or into the non-healing wounds, stimulating the growth of cells that are needed for repair. 

“We take the blood clot and we transplant it back to the patient’s body. When we do that, we trick the body into thinking there is a bleeding wound. And the body restarts the healing process and starts to heal the wounds that it didn’t heal before,” Kushnir tells NoCamels. 

Kushnir cites the example of a woman whose diabetes had caused such severe ulcers that left her wheelchair-bound. The RedDress treatment, he says, healed her wounds. 

“Literally, we fixed her foot, and she could walk again after three years,” he says. 

The treatment is also suitable for non-healing wounds such as pressure sores, an issue that affects people who are bedridden or suffer mobility problems. They are caused when constant pressure on a body part stops the blood flow to an area of skin and the cells die off. 

It is also suitable for anal fistulas caused by ailments such as Crohn’s Disease, when an unhealed ulcer creates a channel that runs from the intestine through the surface of the skin close to the anus.  

“We take the blood, we mix it and then inject the blood into the fistula. We fill it up, and heal it,” Kushnir says. 

The company was founded in 2009 by Kushnir’s father Igal, a physician who invented the external blood clot process. Both father and son have extensive experience in the MedTech sector. 

“My father initially had an idea on how to protect burn victims. We took the idea and we developed it and we started working on it in the lab. We found that it’s very powerful for different applications, and we never looked back,” Kushnir explains.

The treatment is used in more than 30 countries around the world, including Brazil, Turkey and France. 

In Israel, it is used by the country’s largest health maintenance organization, Clalit, which provides care to more than half of the population. Israel has a strong MedTech sector, and in 2022 was ranked sixth in the World Index of Healthcare Innovation, above the US, the UK, Denmark and Belgium.

The company received FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) clearance to treat non-healing wounds like ulcers and fistulas in 2020, and the clot is in use in American hospitals and clinics. 

Now RedDress hopes to expand to treat other kinds of injuries. 

“The technology can be applied all over the human body. It can be applied in bones, in tendons, in cartilage, in nerve cells. Whatever cell has problems regenerating, by using the blood clot, we can force the body to start with regeneration and start healing,” he says. 

These advances, however, are still in the trial stage and are 5 to 10 years away. 

For now, the company is satisfied with its results, helping people who previously believed they could not be helped. Kushnir describes a patient with multiple fistulas who said he could never go to the beach with his kids. 

“After two weeks of treatment, he came for a checkup. And he said: ‘I went to the beach yesterday.’ This is the type of thing that drives us.” 

The post Bandage Made From Your Own Blood Treats Non-Healing Wounds appeared first on NoCamels.

More than 70,000 people worldwide suffer from cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic condition that creates a potentially deadly buildup of thick mucus in the lungs and other passageways in the body.  

And while drugs are on the market to help alleviate the symptoms of the chronic disease, around 20 percent of CF sufferers have a rare form of the illness that cannot be treated by conventional medicine. 

But Jerusalem-based startup SpliSense says its new treatment can help those patients for whom traditional solutions do not work, using RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) technology to rebalance the proteins in the body that cause the condition. 

“It’s an unmet need for a small patient population and is now in clinical studies,” SpliSense CEO Gili Hart tells NoCamels from the recent BioMed conference in Tel Aviv.

SpliSense also develops treatments for large but still unmet indications that are considered muco-obstructive diseases, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which cause a buildup of mucus in the body.

Mucus is the first line of defense in the lungs, Hart says, and it protects the organ from pathogens and particles. 

In a healthy body, mucus is made up of almost entirely water, with some two percent being solid proteins. 

“If a patient suffers from muco-obstructive disease, like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or asthma, the mucus is thicker and they are generating much more mucus, because it’s more concentrated, more viscous,” Hart says. 

“This is because the amount of those solid proteins significantly increases to 10 percent. And if you have 10 percent solid mucus it gets stuck, you can’t clear it and you cannot breathe. You have an obstruction. 

“This generates inflammation because bacteria love mucus and this leads to lung function deterioration, and people die from it.”  

SpliSense’s inhaled RNA treatment reduces the levels of those solid proteins by inhibiting their production in the lungs. 

“And by that we restore the balance. Patients can clear the mucus, breathe better and improve their lung function,” she says.  

“We tailor the mechanism based on the disease.”

RNA is found in all living cells in the human body. It is created from DNA in our cells, and then used as the blueprint to make the proteins that the body needs for each and every process it carries out. 

“RNA is really the final stage of generating proteins that are actually the active portion within our body,” Hart says. “Everything in the end is driven by proteins.”

Inside the body, an adapted RNA sequence has three ways of using proteins to treat a disease: by blocking them; by modifying existing mutations within them; or by restoring them to full functioning. The CF treatment uses all three methods. 

“It’s a unique and innovative approach to really try to address diseases using small, very neat RNA sequences,” Hart says. “It’s a different concept.” 

Most recently, RNA technology was used in the development of coronavirus vaccines, making it very popular and validated as a therapy, according to Hart.

Due to the technology’s versatility, ease of large-scale production, safety and potency, it was also used for many years previously in the creation of vaccines for cancer and other diseases.  

“We’re using small sequences of RNA to really control the expression of future proteins,” Hart says. 

“It gets into the different kinds of cells in the target region in the lungs that we are aiming for. It binds specifically to a complementary sequence on the RNA within our body.”

Because of the method through which the medicine is delivered, the treatment is directed at the part of the body that is directly impacted by the disorder.

“We deliver our RNA by inhalation with a nebulizer,” Hart explains. “The advantage of doing that is that it’s really organ specific. So you have the advantage of giving it specifically to the lungs. 

“This means it doesn’t really get anywhere else, so the safety profile of our drugs is very promising, because you don’t expose any other organs to something that they shouldn’t be exposed to. We are only treating the lungs, where the disease comes from.” 

A small proportion of the medication might enter the lymph nodes or be distributed to peripheral parts of the body through the bloodstream, but, Hart clarifies, the levels are so low they are essentially ineffective.

The number of people actually suffering from a rare form of CF is small, making the treatment what Hart calls an orphan – a therapy that is not deemed cost effective by pharmaceutical companies and relies on government or private funding.  

The therapy is currently in stage two trials, meaning it is undergoing testing in a group of several hundred people. But because of this orphan status, SpliSense is eligible to apply for accelerated approval from both the American Food and Drug Agency (FDA) and the European Union’s European Medicines Agency (EMA). 

Among the investors in the technology is the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the United States-based leader in searching for a cure for the condition. It contributed more than $8 million of the $28.5 million SpliSense raised in its latest funding round. 

“They really believe in our technology,” says Hart.  

The post Taking A Deep Breath To Treat Rare Lung Disease appeared first on NoCamels.