Israel Active

A volunteer with Israel Emergency Medical Service United Hatzalah has developed a smartphone app to quickly locate swimmers in trouble off Haifa’s beaches, and navigate paramedics to that location.

Ben Shetiat’s first call, after completing his 6-months Emergency Medical training course, was an infant having seizures – at Ben’s sister’s house! He arrived in two minutes. After treatment, Ben’s nephew was taken to hospital and was well enough to be discharged later that night.

This could be it.  Teams of Israeli scientists from Tel Aviv University and Sheba and Hadassah Medical centers working together have triggered cell death in tumors. Derivatives of the compound Phenanthridine caused cancer cells to self-destruct in the most resistant and incurable cancers such as pancreatic.  Watch this space!

Ex-Tennessee Titans footballer Tim Shaw has just returned from Jerusalem’s Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center following a stem cell transplant to treat ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Cells collected from him in January were purified, replicated and injected back into his spine.

Professor Dror Harats, CEO of VBL Therapeutics on ILTV News described the Phase 2 results of VB-111. The treatment (now in Phase 3 trials) doubles survival time for brain tumor patients and ovarian cancer patients.  It works for most solid tumor cancers.

Professor Asher Bashiri of Israel’s Soroka University Medical Center led the 2017 World Congress on Recurrent Pregnancy Loss, held in Cannes, France. Doctors representing over 50 countries attended.

I reported previously about Israel’s PolyPid slow-release antibiotic bone implants.  PolyPid has just been accepted into the US FDA Qualified Infectious Disease Program - a new FDA status for innovative products in the treatment of bacteria resistant to antibiotics.

Israel’s Teva and Philips Healthcare selected 9 from 750 startups for their Sanara joint Israeli medical incubator.  They include MeWay (nebulizer) Myhomedoc (smartphone checkup and diagnosis), BReathme (asthma management), Purecare (gum treatment), Lensfree (lowers CT radiation), Lifegraph (migraine prevention), Lidus (blood vessel suturing) and SpirCare (lung capacity measurement).

Israel’s BiolineRx is buying UK’s Agalimmune,for $6 million. The private UK-based company has developed an innovative, anti-cancer immunotherapy platform. treatment that not only kills the tumor cells at the site of injection, but also brings about a durable, follow-on, anti-metastatic immune response.

I reported previously about Professor Yehuda Shoenfeld of Israel’s Sheba Hospital. He has now founded startup TPCera which found that parasitic Helminth worms excrete a substance that stops the immune system attacking it.  It can be used to treat auto-immune diseases.