The aim of the proposed NPO will be to shift the emphasis of research in Israel towards brain research through conventions, steering committees, and, most importantly, by raising money. The NPO will identify the most interesting and important subfields in brain research where Israel has the greatest comparative advantage, and raise capital to support basic and applied research in them via a range of research institutes, NPOs, and possibly young commercial companies.

Peres told “Globes”, “We intend to replicate our achievements in nanotechnology in neurotechnology, but the scale will be much greater and more impressive.”

The president’s aides said that Peres helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for nanotechnology research, and that he could probably do the same for neurotechnology.

Gidron said that two areas would be the focus of research: the human-machine interface and therapies. At ILSI Biomed 2011, Peres and Gidron met top Israeli and foreign brain researchers, as well as Office of the Chief Scientist head of life sciences Ora Dar. They identified several important subjects for action, including early diagnostics for neurological and psychiatric disorders, support and for demonstration for academic ideas, and support for the use of advanced medical computer systems at Israel’s hospitals and health funds to collect data and conduct research on brain disorders, including depression, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, autism, strokes, and schizophrenia.

In the coming months, the NPO will convene a steering committee to formulate a road map for operations, after which it will begin raising capital and publish calls for papers for researchers and companies.

The first fruit of this activity is the raising of $10 million for neuron computability – the translation of brain activity for the computer. The money was raised from foreign donors for a special foundation that will finance a joint research team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne.

Peres said, “Israel lives on its brain. This is not a one-time thing, it is something renewed constantly and ever more powerfully. We’re now embarking on the fourth revolution. The first were the agricultural, industrial, and information revolutions, and now comes the revolution of the brain. This is a problem that Israel devotes itself to solving as quickly as possible and as strongly as possible.”

Gali Weinreb
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news – www.globes-online.com – on May 23, 2011

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Israeli biotech company Aposense offers a futuristic way of diagnosing, monitoring and treating disease through molecules designed to detect cell death (apoptosis). While apoptosis is a universal process in cell biology, it plays a role in most medical disorders. Targeting cells undergoing apoptosis, for imaging or delivering therapy, can therefore have broad clinical applications.

PET image of apoptosis in a brain metastasis, imaged with the Aposense probe (Picture courtesy Aaron Allen, Davidoff Comprehensive Cancer Center, Rabin Medical Center, Petah-Tikva)

Aposense’s patented small molecular probes selectively identify and accumulate within dying cells. They act as an imaging agent to show areas of disease or to provide a picture of the effects of treatment on cancerous cells only hours or days afterward, without any need for tissue samples.

This nearly instant molecular imaging is a vast improvement over conventional anatomical imaging, which cannot detect disease or demonstrate the effects of treatment until months later. Aposense CEO Yoram Ashery says that clinical trials at 12 major American medical centers are currently testing Aposense imaging capabilities in 90 patients with various kinds of malignant tumors. Results should be ready to present to the US Food and Drug Administration late this year.

Direct drug delivery spares healthy cells

“By allowing clinicians to know early if a treatment is working, we are enabling a new paradigm of tailoring treatments to the patients, and an important step in materializing the vision of personalized medicine,” he says.

Imaging is not the only promising use for Aposense molecular solutions. They also can deliver drugs directly to apoptotic cells and tissues without harming healthy cells. Aposense and Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals are progressing toward designing such a targeted drug therapy for cancer, which would offer a significant advance in chemotherapy. However, the potential applications go way beyond oncology, into neurology and cardiology.

“With our platform for targeting apoptosis, there are many diseases we can be effective against, using our rationally designed probes to carry the medication to the target,” says Ashery. “We want to put out four or five new candidates per year.”

Petah Tikva-based Aposense, founded by neurologist Ilan Ziv in 1997 and chaired by former Teva CEO Eli Hurvitz, was privately held until its initial public offering on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in June. Each of its 30 staff chemists, molecular biologists, bioinformatics specialists, pharmacists, physicians and clinicians oversees a single project with outside collaborators, such as Teva. A clinical team of five travels frequently to the US to monitor hospital trials.

“Rational drug design”

Just as the molecular approach to imaging and drug delivery is novel, so is the mode of developing it, Ashery explains. Traditionally, pharmaceuticals are derived through a process of “discovery,” involving lots of trial and error until the most effective formula is found. However, that method does not allow the developers to understand exactly why it works or under what conditions it might stop working, Ashery notes.

“The more advanced development approach is ‘rational drug design,’ based on studying the targets from every biochemical aspect and using computational technologies to design a structure optimal for that target,” he says. “We’ve taken that path of rational design, which takes longer because you’re building your molecules atom by atom, like Legos. But once you’ve optimized it, you know the specific role of each and every atom, and then you can also modify it as necessary for particular purposes.”

Pharmaceutical powerhouses including Roche in Switzerland and GlaxoSmithKline in the United Kingdom recently signed agreements with Aposense allowing them to use the specially formulated molecules in drug-development studies. “In return, we get the data from those tests,” says Ashery. “It’s a win-win situation.”

Possibilities for expanding the use of Aposense molecules in imaging are also being explored in the laboratories of US academic institutions affiliated with clinical test sites.

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The study conducted at the Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre in Melbourne included 16 healthy adults and 20 patients with autism or Asperger’s syndrome. The results of the empathy and Theory of Mind studies showed clear short term effect of one-time use of Deep TMS on the healthy patients, and small but significant improvement in the patients with autism or Asperger’s syndrome, compared with the control group, which received a sham treatment.

The treatment lasted for just two weeks per patient, and the improvement was seen for about a month following the end of the treatment. The researchers intend to conduct a follow-on study on a larger number of patients over a longer period of time and increased strength of the electromagnetic stimulation treatment in order to increase the improvement.

Brainsway neurological consultant Dr. Abraham Zangen said, “The study provided positive signs regarding the special coil developed for treating autism and Asperger’s syndrome. The parallel study on the healthy patients teaches us the possibility of optimizing the parameters that will maximize the benefit in subsequent studies on patients suffering from autism and Asperger’s syndrome.”

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One of the foremost challenges we are facing today in the field of neuroscience is to understand the ability of organisms to translate their genetic code into behavioral and physiological functions.

This meeting seeks to expose the Israeli scientific community to the conceptually multistep gap between the genotype and phenotype by exposing students and scientists to studies in the scientific domain of behavioral and physiological neurogenetics. The presented studies employ behavioral and physiological methodologies combined with state-of-the-art molecular, biochemical and genetic techniques and address questions concerning the influence of biological and environmental factors on behaviors and physiological functions that relate to pathologies and variations between individuals.
PLEASE NOTE:
Admission is FREE, yet due to space limitation registration is required.
On-line registration (http://www.weizmann.ac.il/conferences/MBP2011) will be available soon.

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The Israel Society for Neuroscience (ISFN) is a registered non-profit organization that was founded in 1992 by several leading Israeli neuroscientists. From about 300 participants at the first Annual Meetings at its establishment, it has doubled in size. Members include neuroscientists and graduate students from all the research institutes and universities in Israel, as well as foreign delegates, all of whom are involved in versatile basic and clinical research of the nervous system.

The Society holds an annual meeting each fall, which offers a stage for presentations of cutting edge research in the form of oral lectures, posters and WEB based abstracts. Abstracts are further printed in a special booklet or as a supplement to an international scientific journal, 2009 and 2010, the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience.

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Questions and confirmation: Most@sm.health.gov.il

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Stem cells are often viewed as the ultimate solution for regenerative medicine, and for a good cause. Given the correct cues, they can regenerate whole parts of the body, and even re-create an entire embryo (although that would require QUITE some understanding of the cues involved in the process). It seems, however, that now a new use has been found for them, as seek-and-destroy missiles against cancer.

The reason this just might work is that stem cells are attracted towards cancer cells. Why? We don’t know. Some say that they respond to the same factors that cause a tumor to invade a healthy tissue. Be it as it may, a team of researchers from the Beckman Research Institute in California used genetically engineered stem cells to combat a form of cancer in the brain. The cells produced an enzyme called cytosine deaminase, which converted a drug called 5-fluorocytosine (5-FC) into its active, chemotherapeutic form.

The engineered stem cells were injected into the brains of mice with glioma – a deadly brain cancer. The mice also received 5-FC, which turned into the chemotherapeutic form mainly at the sites the stem cells were at. The tumors’ mass was reduced by a whopping 70% compared with the untreated animals.

As reported in New Scientist, the US FDA granted the researchers “approval to carry out a safety trial of the therapy in up to 20 patients with recurrent glioma, for whom life expectancy is just three to six months. The stem cells will be injected into the tumour cavity following surgery to reduce its mass, and then given four days to home in on any remaining cancer cells. Patients will then be treated with daily 5-FC for one week.”

The stem cells used in the research do not seem to differentiate, and stop proliferating after 48 hours, which should ensure they won’t create yet another cancer in the body. Hopefully, the clinical trials will end well and the researchers will head to phase II soon after. In the meantime, we’ll have to settle for hearing more about cancer and stem cells at the ILSI-BioMed week 2010, where a Technology Transfer Session will be held on the subject of Pharmaceuticals and Stem cells, moderated by Dr. Sylvie Lauria, the Technology Transfer Office of Sheba Medical Center.

Source: New Scientist

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The Department for Multiple Sclerosis in Sheba Hopsital will present for the first time a novel kit for sensory training, that improves patients’ brain activity. The kit will be presented in the BioMed Israel Week 2010, which will be held on July 14th-16th in Tel Aviv.
The kit is based on cylinders that come in varied textures, and is designed for populations that suffer from a decline in feeling at the palms, including the healthy aging population that suffers from an age-related decrease in sensory feeling. The kit should also help patients who suffer from neuropathic diseases, which cause an advanced decrease of sensory feeling due to the peripheral neuronal injury. Other target populations include patients who suffer from diseases of small blood vessels, patients with cancer who receive chemotherapy that leads to similar injury, and patients after brain infraction, or multiple sclerosis patients, in which the sensory injury is due to a brain or spinal cord injury.
The kit includes 24 cylinders, a string for the parts, a DVD set with instructions and a bag to hold them all. The use of the kit is simple: the exercise is conducted with closed-shut eyes, while feeling and identifying the texture of each cylinder for 15 minutes a day.
The new kit, in which the difficulty level (as determined by the texture) can be as befitting the user, was developed by the Department for Multiple Sclerosis in Sheba Hospital. Among the participants in the project were Prof. Anat Achiron, neurologist and head of the Multiple Sclerosis Center, Simona Gelb, occupational therapist and Michal Grinberg Abrahami, industrial designer and product developer. According to the developer team, the novelty of the invention lies in the fact that the training method is based on the learning capability and plasticity of the brain. “Recent researches have proven that training can lead to an increase in the number of synaptic connections, which correlates with an improvement in function. In the research that we have conducted on multiple sclerosis patients with sensory injury… we have found that after practicing there was an improvement of 12.5% in a PDT2 sensory test and an improvement of 27% in an MFT sensory test – and that’s after home training for three weeks.”
According to the developers, the new, user-friendly therapeutic tool has special significance for the younger of age (children and teenagers) with sensory injuries, since it enables them to practice daily in an independent manner. The kit, the price of which to the consumer will be 350 NIS, will become available during June 2010.

ILSI-BioMed Israel 2010
‘ILSI-BioMed Israel 2010′ is the annual main event of the Israeli life sciences industry. The week includes a professional international conference with the participation of the best experts (CEOs and senior managers from companies in the fields of bio-pharma and medical devices, researchers and scientists, entrepreneurs, publicists, venture capital funds managers and private investors) from Israel and abroad, and a show that presents the newest innovations. ILSI-BioMed Israel 2010, which has won international acclaim and is considered the second largest conference in the world after the United States, will be held between the 14th and 16th of June at the David Intercontinental hotel in Tel Aviv.

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The relationship between the mind and the body has never been fully determined. Worse, the field is wide open for charlatans, holistic healers, homeopaths, naturopaths and what-have-you. However, from time to time we get some ‘real’ peer-reviewed scientific papers that offer new insights on the mind-body link. Such a paper was recently published in the Movement Disorders Journal, in which two researchers from RAMBAM hospital describe a new treatment for Parkinson’s disease patients: Guided Affective Imagery, also known in Hebrew as דמיון מודרך.

Twenty patients registered to the research, all of them suffering from tremors. By the end of each treatment, all the patients experienced a significant relief from the tremors, and in most of them (75%) the tremors subsided altogether. The tremor levels were measured objectively via an accelerometer, and some of the patients were also monitored with an EEG during the relaxation.

Of course, as with all new papers that claim a breakthrough, caution must be taken in translating the results into a commercial product. I would be much happier if the research included a control group who were asked to simply rest instead of practicing guided affective imagery. However, assuming that there is no fluke in the results, then this research opens a new road for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease patients. Perhaps the bio-medical engineers can come into the picture by modifying some of the portable, affordable, EEG personal readers and devising a software that will enable the patient to do his own exercise at home.

Source: RAMBAM Hospital press release

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Yissum has announced that, together with the Technion Research and Development Foundation (TRDF), the technology transfer arm of the Technion Israel Institute of Technology, it will exclusively license to Avraham the commercial rights of Ladostigil, a novel cholinesterase, brain-selective monoamine oxidase inhibitor and neuroprotective agent for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.

The drug has proven to be safe and well tolerated in Phase I/IIa clinical trials. As part of an advanced product development program, Avraham will use the newly invested capital to complete an additional 52-week Phase II proof-of-concept efficacy trial in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Ladostigil is a novel compound that was designed to provide a comprehensive medical treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Like other cholinesterase inhibitors currently on the market, Ladostigil targets symptomatic relief in Alzheimer’s patients. But unlike these drugs, Ladostigil is the first multi-functional drug to reach clinical trials, acting via additional novel mechanisms of action, providing potential to improve the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia such as depression and anxiety. Ladostigil also has the potential to slow progression of clinical symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease for sustained periods of time and to modify the pathology associated with the disease – and other neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease.

The novel drug was envisaged by Prof. Marta Weinstock-Rosin of the Department of Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Moussa B.H. Youdim of the Eve Top and National Parkinson Foundation Centers of Excellence Rappaport School of Medicine, Technion, Haifa, Israel.

Prof. Weinstock-Rosin’s research at the Hebrew University also led to the discovery and development of Exelon^®, a blockbuster drug for treatment of dementia associated with Alzheimer’s disease as well as dementia in Parkinson’s disease, which was licensed to and is marketed by Novartis Pharma AG. Prof. Youdim’s research at the Technion led to the discovery and development of Azilect^®, a successful new drug for treatment of Parkinson’s disease, which was licensed to and is marketed by Teva Pharmaceuticals.

 Dr. David Warshawsky is the CEO of Avraham Pharmaceuticals.

Taken from ILSI website

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