A small team of researchers based in the hills outside Jerusalem is designing technology that could potentially save thousands of women’s lives per year. The company behind this, Illumigyn, is using advanced imaging technology originating in the Israeli military to develop medical hardware that gynecologists could use to better identify and treat cervical cancer and other diseases in routine inspections for women.
“The product is ready, and this is a game-changing experience for the patient, for the quality of service, and for the ability to treat women, not only at the point of injury, or problem, but also through their entire life,” said Ran Poliakine, the serial entrepreneur funding the project.
The largest ever investment bet by the storied venture firm Founders Fund has paid off.
The drug company AbbVie, based in Massachusetts, said it would pay $5.8 billion in cash and stock to take over Stemcentrx, a little-known biotech backed by Founders Fund and whose strategy for treating cancer we first wrote about in September.
In March of 2011, ARTIS and our affiliates led the first institutional round of financing at Stemcentrx with a $18M investment in a total round of $25M. Stemcentrx represented everything we look for within our portfolio companies: a talented, passionate team addressing a hard problem we care deeply about with a differentiated approach showing promising early results. This morning, AbbVie announced its acquisition of Stemcentrx for as much as $10.2 billion.
Nearly two-thirds of the herbal medicines used by cancer patients in the Middle East have potential health risks, according to a new Israeli study. These seemingly harmless plants and extractions were found to interact with conventional cancer drugs and chemotherapy, negatively affecting life-saving anti-cancer treatments.
The study, led by Prof. Eran Ben-Arye of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, was recently published in the prestigious scientific journal Cancer. It concludes that herbal remedies such as turmeric may increase the toxic effects of certain chemotherapies, while gingko biloba and green teas could increase the risks of bleeding in some cancer patients. Other herbs, including black cumin, can reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy.
No one illustrates the promise of cell therapy better than a little girl named Emily Whitehead. She was just 5 years old when she got sick with a common type of childhood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Roughly 98 percent of children go into remission within weeks of treatment, but Emily relapsed repeatedly despite several rounds of chemotherapy.
Scientists at the Weizmann Institute may have found the cure for prostate cancer, at least if it is caught in its early stages – via a drug that doctors inject into cancerous cells and treat with infrared laser illumination.
Using a therapy lasting 90 minutes, the drug, called Tookad Soluble, targets and destroys cancerous prostate cells, studies show, allowing patients to check out of the hospital the same day without the debilitating effects of chemical or radiation therapy or the invasive surgery that is usually used to treat this disease.
Just breathe into a Technion invention, and it’ll tell you with nearly 90 percent accuracy whether you have deadly lung cancer — hopefully in time to save your life.
“NaNose” should be on the market in a few years, according to developers. It addresses the key obstacle to treating lung cancer — finding it in time to knock it out.
NaNose sniffed out malignant tumors with up to 90 percent accuracy in recent tests. At the heart of the device — which looks like a “breathalyzer,” the tool police use to detect alcohol levels — is a chip based on the NaNose technology developed by a Technion researcher.
The bra, created by scientists at Colombia’s National University, contains small infrared sensors that record the breasts' temperature and provide a warning signal if they detect any irregularities.
The bra can produce a reading in a matter of minutes. It uses a stoplight-style three-light warning system, with a green light meaning no issues have been detected, a yellow light suggesting that another test needs to be conducted, and a red light warning the user to visit a doctor to receive a proper medical exam.
«Cuando ocurrió el desastre, no pude abandonar la ciudad. Ahora me preocupan las hemorragias nasales de mi hija. Se le ha diagnosticado un quiste cervical en la garganta. Cuando llora, le duele tanto que no puede respirar bien». Makiko, la madre de una niña de seis años, se desespera al relatar los problemas de salud que sigue padeciendo su hija en Koriyama, una ciudad 50 kilómetros al sur de la central nuclear de Fukushima.
