Israel Active

Belgium-Israeli medical device company Nyxoah is gearing up for the European trials of its sleep apnea treatment. A tiny chip is implanted into the patient’s chin, which stimulates nerves to prevent the tongue from blocking airflow – a common cause of sleep apnea.

(Thanks to Atid-EDI) A human patient with deficient jawbone has received a successful bone transplant using bone grown by Israel’s Bonus BioGroup using the patient’s own fat cells. The company expects the graft to be fully tolerated, without immunological rejection.

A protein discovered by a Tel Aviv University research team may reverse the damage caused by Alzheimer’s. Laboratory tests showed that TAU (tubulin-associated unit) restored levels of the dementia-protecting protein NAP. It also restored disease-shrunken brains to normal size.

Israeli biotech Keystone Heart’s TriGuard is a cerebral protection device specifically designed to minimize the risk of brain damage during heart valve replacements and other cardiovascular procedures. Keystone has just raised $14 million of investment funding.

Professor Dimitrios Karussis, Principal Investigator of BrainStorm’s clinical trials of its ALS stem cell treatment at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center, will present at the Joint Congress of European Neurology, May 31-June 3 in Istanbul, Turkey.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that men in Israel live until the average age of 80.2 and are ranked fourth in the world. Only men in Iceland (81.2), Switzerland and Australia live longer. Israeli women (84) are tenth in the world, compared to Europe (76) and the rest of the Middle East (68).

Dr Anat Achiron of the Israel’s Sheba Medical Center in Tel-Hashomer has reported that in controlled trials, a synthetic analog of vitamin D significantly reduced fatigue, which is common in patients with multiple sclerosis. The compound is 1a-hydroxyvitamin D3 (alfacalcidol).

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered that the protein Erbin is an important brake that helps prevent cardiac hypertrophy – the stage before heart failure when the heart grows in an attempt to increase its output.

Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have demonstrated the molecular basis of Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) - perhaps the most studied among the class of diseases that involves defects in parental imprinting. PWS is due to a defective gene on chromosome 15.

It is 57 years since the thalidomide tragedy that resulted in thousands of deaths and babies born with severe limb deformities. Now Tel Aviv University scientists have pinpointed the genetic regulator “switch” responsible p53 and its downstream target gene, MicroRNA34.