Israel Active

The phrase “you cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear” is no longer true. Israel Technion scientists have used pig tissue to create a thick “scaffold” for heart muscle. It will allow doctors to rehabilitate the damaged scar tissue caused by heart attacks.

Israel is to conduct part of an international investigation into targeted treatment of secondary cancer. Such patients do not respond to surgery or radiotherapy. But analysis of the genetic mutations of their tumours may identify medication that could destroy the cancer throughout the body.

It was one of those days that newsletter subscriber Jay Wohlgelernter was pleased that he went into work at Schneider Children's Medical Centre in Petach Tikvah.

Patients in an advanced stage of metastatic melanoma are being given a new lease of life at the Ella Institute of Sheba Medical Centre in Tel Aviv. Sheba’s innovative Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TIL) trials have patients from Europe coming to Israel to be rid of the deadly cancer.

Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals has reported success in the Phase IIa clinical trial of Laquinimod in moderate to severe Crohn’s disease. The announcement was made at the 20th United European Gastroenterology (UEG) conference in Amsterdam.

The US Food and Drug Administration has given pre-marketing approval for ExAblate targeted focused ultrasound treatment from Israel’s InSightec Image Guided Treatment Ltd.. The approval is initially for bone cancer patients who cannot undergo radiation therapy.

Mazor Robotics has received its first order in Vietnam for its Renaissance robotic navigation system for spinal surgery. The system will be installed at the Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi, the country's largest surgical hospital, with 1,000 beds.

New Tel Aviv University and Sheba Medical Center research has found that Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) share a root cause with psychiatric illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The research accessed anonymous records from over one million Israeli soldiers.

The Natural Medicine Research Unit for the Study of Complementary, Alternative and Integrated Medicine at Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem is exploring some ancient methods to cure modern day ailments. The centre even germinated a 2,000-year-old Judean date palm seed.

The Tel Aviv University CONNECT project has scanned 120 healthy brains with a magnetic resonance instrument (MRI) to build the world’s first “atlas” of the microstructure of white matter. The data could help identify signs of neurological and psychiatric diseases and lead to early treatment.