Israel Active

Canada’s Finance Minister Joe Oliver announced a seven-year, $35-million program will fund up to 30 joint Canadian-Israeli research projects. The first projects will focus on neuroscience, with up to six $1 million grants per year for up to three years.

Top scientists from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer are working together on the Alex U. Soyka Pancreatic Cancer Research Project. The OICR is giving $4.6 million to the project.

Israel Technion’s Professor Hossam Haick has won a Gates Foundation award to help development of a sensing plaster that can detect tuberculosis biomarkers on the skin. Professor Haick is already famous for his nanotech breath analyzer that detects cancer.

Israel’s BiondVax has received FDA approval of its application to proceed with clinical trials of its universal Multimeric-001 flu vaccine (M-001).

The Israeli ApiFix system has now been used to correct scoliosis (deformed spines) in 50 adolescents since the minimally invasive system was approved for marketing in Europe in 2013.

The CuPID project, co-directed by Tel Aviv University’s Dr. Anat Mirelman, has developed a smartphone app to help Parkinson’s sufferers who have a common symptom called Freezing of Gait (FoG). The CuPID app uses sensors on the shoes and alerts the wearer audibly, if they are likely to fall.

Israeli biotech Nutrinia develops treatments for intestinal failure in preterms, infants and adults. Its NTRA-9620 treatment has just been granted orphan status by the US FDA.

Israel’s Sleep ASAP (Art Science Awareness Platform) is described as “Waze for the sleep-deprived”. The sleep-management organization educates sleep-strugglers about getting a pill-free good night’s sleep, and is launching meetups in the USA, Canada and Australia.

Dr Yuval Tabach of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has developed an Internet tool that will allow any investigator, physician or patient to analyze a gene according to its evolutionary profile. It will help identify genes associated with genetic diseases and cancer.

Beneficiaries of the latest donation from the Helmsley Trust include Ezra LeMarpeh which is building a medical rehabilitation center in Sderot; the JNF, for a medical center in NW Negev’s Halutza community; and United Hatzalah, for its central dispatch center.