Israel Active

Heart transplants for children are rare. And when the cardiac condition of 13-year-old Dov from Arad deteriorated, it looked bleak. Then on the Jewish festival of Purim, surgeons at Israel’s Schneider children’s hospital gave him a new heart. And on the same day, they gave a 5-year-old girl a new kidney.

Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have been able to silence the gene controlling the p53 protein known as “the guardian of the genome”. The p53 protein is mutated or dysfunctional in over two-thirds of all cancers. Korean biotech BioLeaders is investing $10 million in the new Israeli therapy.

The India-Israel Industrial R&D and Technological Innovation Fund (I4F) has given $4.3 million to Israel's Zebra Medical to deploy its Artificially Intelligent screening system across India. Zebra’s AI medical imaging technology can early-diagnose some of the 3.6 million new TB patients every year.

Israeli Emergency Medical Service United Hatzalah has just opened a new chapter in Colombia – its fifth country outside of its Israeli base. UH aims to reduce emergency response times in Colombia down from 45 minutes to just three.  UH operates in the US, Panama, Ukraine and Brazil.  

I reported previously that the Hebrew University and Hadassah were establishing the first interdisciplinary university-based autism center in the Middle East. Now Ben Gurion University has upgraded its autism database and opened a National Autism Research Center.

"Newsweek" has ranked Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv as one of the world's top ten hospitals. “Newsweek” says the hospital is, "a leader in medical science and biotechnical innovation, both in the Middle East and worldwide.”

Israel’s Teva has just launched a generic version of Flector Patch (diclofenac epolamine) in the United States. The patch treats topical treatment of acute pain due to minor strains, sprains and contusions.

I reported previously on Israel’s Aidoc and its Artificially Intelligent image software that can help doctors diagnose brain bleeds. Aidoc has just released its CE-marked product to identify and triage pulmonary embolism (PE) responsible for 100,000 deaths annually in the USA.

Israel’s Tower Semiconductor has developed a microfluidics Bio/CMOS chip for molecular in vitro diagnostics. The device, which is intended for blood test analyses, was developed in Tower’s partnership with Chinese biotech Axbio and is planned to go into production in mid-2019.

Dr. Yair Maimon is head of the Tal Integrative Cancer Research Center at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center. Thanks to 30 years’ experience of Chinese botanical medicine, his LCS101 botanical formula alleviates treatment side effects, boosts the immune system and kills selective cancer cells.