Faced with a growing number of head trauma cases due to the ongoing violence triggered by Hamas terrorism, medical professionals in Israel’s largest hospital are innovating – including with the use of artificial intelligence – to help treat its victims. 

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.

A model embryo grown in the lab and not the womb, using stem cells and not egg and sperm, could be the future of research into pregnancy and drug testing and even provide bespoke organ transplants, its creator says. 

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.

An Israeli company has produced an insulin-based therapy that strengthens the digestive system of babies born prematurely, helping to stop them from developing life-threatening complications.

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.

An Israeli startup is working on an injection that could both prevent and treat acute radiation poisoning at nuclear disaster sites, using stem cells from placenta donated by women after giving birth. 

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.

For people living with advanced kidney failure, hemodialysis treatment can be a lifeline to a normal existence. 

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.

Israeli researchers have devised a new way of treating cancerous cells in bone marrow – for the first time taking the therapy directly to the cancer inside the soft, fatty tissue contained within our bones. 

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.

An Israeli startup is developing a new protein-based cancer treatment that it says has the potential to address one of the most important oncology targets. ExoProTher says its therapy solely affects the mutated cells that form tumors, and, unlike other treatments, does not affect healthy cells.  

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.

Chest pain is a common problem with dozens of causes that range from harmless bruised muscles from coughing to potentially fatal pulmonary embolisms. But for the person involved, the experience can be a frightening one – even when the cause turns out to be relatively minor.

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.

Israeli scientists have developed a new drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease following a recent discovery about how people lose their memories. 

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.

Imagine that just by going to sleep you could help resolve skin problems such as acne, psoriasis, and eczema. 

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.

An Israeli startup has developed a wearable device that can predict the likelihood of an imminent stroke through changes in the carotid artery’s blood flow, potentially helping early intervention and preventing disablity. 

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.

An Israeli researcher has patented a way of using a patient’s tears to diagnose Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s – the two most common neurodegenerative diseases in the world – in their pre-symptom stages. 

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.

For many millions of people living with conditions like diabetes that affect blood flow, a minor cut or a scratch can have grave medical consequences. 

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.

A breakthrough therapy for a rare and potentially fatal form of lung disease treats patients at home with a short, weekly or biweekly session with a nebulizer – a machine that turns liquid medication into an easily inhaled mist. The therapy delivers a new RNA treatment to sufferers for whom standard medication does not work. 

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.  

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