Israel Active

In a medical world first, doctors at Israel’s Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva have delivered gene therapy into the brain of an eight-month-old baby suffering from a rare, life-threatening form of genetic epilepsy. They injected healthy copies of the faulty WWOX gene.

Tel Aviv University researchers have discovered that irreversible hearing loss caused by damage to inner ear hair cells, may be reversed by converting nearby “transdifferentiating Deiters’ cells (tDCs) from supporting cells to hair cells. Expanding this to other cells could restore hearing.

Israel’s Modulight Biotherapeutics is developing optogenetic therapy  using light-activated proteins (opsins - developed at Israel’s Weizmann Institute) to target neurons in the brain and treat severe neurological disorders. These include neuropathic pain, epilepsy, and movement disorders. +

Israel’s Nuri Braintech has developed the world’s first emotion brain-computer interface for psychiatry to treat trauma sufferers. Its implantable system uses Deep Brain Recoding - a closed-loop neuromodulation protocol that senses trauma signals and guides the brain to unlearn them.

Israel’s Phantom GI is developing a device designed to create an ostomy under local anesthesia. It would relieve a blockage for inoperable bowel obstruction patients (some 55,000 per year in the USA). The PercStoma  device uses a needle puncture, local anesthesia and X-ray imaging.

Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute and in New Jersey have proved that DNA mutations do not occur randomly. Repair enzymes fix damaged DNA, preventing diseases such as cancer, but only if the DNA bends to create a negative charge. The enzyme ignores straight DNA.

Dr. Marcelo Feighelstein, head of the AI Systems Engineering Program at Israel’s Tel Hai University, has developed AI-based tools capable of recognizing pain and emotions in cats, dogs, rabbits, sheep, cattle, and now horses. It can help determine pain in newborns and those unable to speak.

In a 19-hour operation, surgeons from Israel’s Schneider and Beilinson hospitals successfully replaced half of a 15-year-old Russian cancer patient's pelvis using a 3D-printed titanium and advanced polymer implant. The implant will now start to grow real bone around it.

Surgeons at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center saved the life of IDF reserve officer Maj. Malachi Moundani by removing a shrapnel fragment that had lodged next to (and touching) his aorta, the body's main artery.

Prof. Lior Gepstein, of the Technion and Rambam Health Care, has received a 4th European Research Council grant (see previously) to support his approach to studying and treating cardiac arrhythmias. The Advanced grant follows Starting, Consolidator, and Proof of concept grants.