Israel Active

Israel has launched the Israel Precision Medicine Partnership -  an innovative $60 million program to enable researchers to target the best treatments for a patient’s disease (e.g. cancer). Precision medicine uses genetic sequencing to predict an individual’s response to specific treatments.

Israel’s Human Xtensions has received FDA clearance for its HandX light-weight, hand-held device that translates the surgeon’s natural hand motions into complex movements inside the patient. It opens vast new horizons for Minimally Invasive Surgery (see video).

The United Nations Population Fund is giving the 2018 Population Award to Israel’s Save a Child’s Heart organization. SACH doctors have (free of charge) saved over 4,500 children with congenital heart defects from all over the world, including Arab countries and the Palestinian Authority.

Israel’s Endospan has received the CE mark for its HORIZON Stent Graft System to treat Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA). Endospan is also awaiting European approval for its NEXUS™ Stent Graft System to treat Aortic Arch Disease.

Israeli blood analysis startup PixCell has been awarded a €2.5 million grant by the European commission to help commercialize its HemoScreen.

Israeli cancer immunotherapy company Compugen is to provide its pipeline of cancer-fighting antibodies to MedImmune – AstraZeneca’s global biologics research and development arm. Compugen will initially receive $10 million and then up to $200 million for the first MedImmune product.

A Filipino baby born at the Red Crescent Hospital in eastern Jerusalem had a rare and serious heart defect, which required complex and risky open-heart surgery. He was taken to Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital where Israeli and Arab doctors together saved the baby’s life.

Scientists at Haifa University have proved that a person’s mood can be determined by examining one’s handwriting. After watching darker, disturbing movies, the 62 study participants all wrote letters of the alphabet smaller in both height and width than after watching positive films.

I reported previously about Israeli Glaucoma- treatment developer IOPtima. Now China’s Kanghong is partnering IPOtima’s to market its glaucoma laser surgery system, IOPtiMate, in Asia, which has some of the world’s highest rates of blindness from glaucoma.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made an impromptu visit to Israel and praised Hadassah Medical Center’s Ein Kerem oncology facility. “Hadassah is proof that medical treatment creates a bridge between people, and a center of hope,” he said.