Category: Research

Israel is celebrating its 74th anniversary after a record-breaking year for its high-tech sector, with $5.6 billion raised in the first quarter of 2022 and over $25 billion raised through 2021.

Indeed, the record fundraising should be praised, but it’s the incredible innovation and technological achievements that have kept Israeli companies at the top of their game this year in sectors like cybersecurity, digital health, and climate tech.

The Israeli tech sector “reached new heights” in the last year, Rotem Shacham, a principal at venture capital firm Viola Ventures, tells NoCamels. “We shattered all kinds of ceilings.”

“Security and Fintech are always at the top of innovation sectors in Israel,” Shacham says, noting that the country is also strong in data infrastructure and both vertical and horizontal applications.

This year, Israelis made medical breakthroughs, resolved problems, dealt with cyber threats, reduced carbon emissions, developed cancer treatments, disrupted industries, and in general, made a significant impact on the world at large.

“I think what is unique about innovation here in Israel is our culture,” Shacham says, “Entrepreneurs are willing to take risks, experiment, and fail. We address problems head-on in a very direct fashion and are not sentimental in admitting failure, learning from it, and venturing out to try again. This grit and perseverance is very unique.”

As Israeli turns 74, NoCamels highlights the companies that have stood out in the past year:

Matricelf

Matricelf, the Israeli regenerative medicine firm established by founder and Chief Scientific Officer Professor Tal Dvir in 2019, announced it was closer than ever to curing paralysis with the development of 3D printed neural implants for paralyzed patients with spinal cord injuries. The company reported it had produced its own in-house induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from human peripheral blood cells, which could be combined with a unique hydrogel from 3D printed implants to potentially cure the condition.

Matricelf VP R&D Dr. Tamar Harel Adar called the achievement a revolutionary and promising technology in the world of cellular therapy and regenerative medicine,” according to Globes.

In February, Israeli scientists reported they had engineered 3D human spinal cord tissues from tissue engineering technology developed by Dvir of Tel Aviv University (TAU) and licensed by Matricelf. The tissues made an implant that could replace the affected tissue of patients suffering from Spinal Cord Injury (SPI,) scientists said, according to “highly encouraging results” when implanted into an animal lab model with long-term chronic paralysis. The implant was said to have an 80 percent success rate in restoring walking abilities in patients.

This has been said to be the first time in the world that implanted engineered tissues have generated recovery in an animal model for long-term chronic paralysis.

In April 2019, TAU researchers, including Dvir, used the same tech to create a “major medical breakthrough” — a live heart — using the revolutionary 3D printing process that includes the human tissue taken from a patient based on the patient’s own biomaterials and cells.

The team hopes to start clinical trials in humans within the next few years, Dvir said. Alongside Spinal Cord Injury, Matricelf’s regenerative tissue engineering technology aims to cure patients suffering from Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), Parkinson’s Disease, and Myocardial Infarction.

UBQ Materials

Between higher consumption rates, rising living standards, and linear life cycles of products, the world now generates just over 2 billion metric tons of municipal solid waste on a yearly basis and at least 33 percent of that waste is environmentally mismanaged. By 2050, global waste is estimated to grow to 3.4 billion metric tons. 

Founded in 2012, Israeli cleantech company UBQ Materials offered a solution to the global waste problem through its patented advanced conversion process which turns landfill-destined waste, including organic material, into a climate-positive, cost-competitive, and fully recyclable material called UBQ™. The resulting bio-based thermoplastic can be used as a drop-in material for existing manufacturing processes as a substitute for virgin petroleum plastic, wood, and even concrete to reduce the overexploitation of finite natural, raw resources, and decrease methane volume and carbon, that would otherwise be emitted from landfills.

“By unlocking the value of waste and converting it into thermoplastic UBQ we have the potential to shift the manufacturing industry from a linear process to a fully circular model. By implementing UBQ, manufacturers are diverting waste, reducing methane emissions and preserving finite natural resources for future generations,” UBQ CEO Tato Bigio tells NoCamels.

This year, UBQ has partnered with giants like PepsiCo, to retrofit its petroleum plastic-based delivery pallets, saving the equivalent of 6,500kg of GHG emission, while Israel’s largest food manufacturer, Nestlé subsidiary Osem-Nestlé, has tapped UBQ Materials to create sustainable shipping pallets of their own, initiating a 24 percent decrease in CO2-equivalent emissions over a 20-year period. Other partnerships include beer brewer Anheuser-Busch and Rhode Island-based thermoplastic designer Teknor Apex Company.

This past March, the company was selected as a winner in the Speculative Design category at the 24th annual SXSW Innovation Awards held in Austin, Texas for its signature waste-based 3D filament.

Empathy

Israeli startup Empathy has been on a mission to change the way the world deals with loss by helping users deal with problems that no one wants to face after the death of a loved one.

Both of Empathy’s co-founders, CEO Ron Gura and CTO Yonatan Bergman, have extensive experience as entrepreneurs, but after the early death of his brother and watching a co-worker in the US deal with the aftermath of his wife’s death, Gura realized he wanted to help others deal with the difficult bureaucracy.

Empathy launched its app last year to help families navigate both the emotional and practical aspects of death, including tasks like planning funerals, dealing with legal and financial issues, and other assistance. The company has already raised $43 million in total just a year after it was founded in 2020.

The app provides step-by-step instructions to complete necessary financial, familial, and bureaucratic tasks, customized to the user’s specific location and situation. They can also enter updates on how they’re feeling. As a side note, Empathy runs a 24/7 call center manned by specially trained “care specialists.”

Cider Security

“The demand in the market for Cider Security is massive,” said John Curtius, partner at Tiger Global Management, in March when Cider Security raised $38 million for its platform that provides a unified view of the entire engineering ecosystem for security teams.

Founded towards the end of 2020, Cider Security’s mission is to solve the most common challenges encountered by chief information security officers and security engineers. The company provides security teams with a tailored set of controls and optimized security strategies tackling anything from code protection to deployment. Cider Security enables AppSec programs to be implemented in minutes by a range of industry verticals, sizes, and maturity levels.

According to the team, founders Guy Fletcher (CEO) and Daniel Krivelevich (CTO) decided to create Cider Security because they felt a lot of frustration while they were trying to implement security as part of the engineering ecosystem and that pain was industry-wide. They felt that the industry’s situation was problematic and that the solutions were very particular and pointed to specific issues without an understanding of the broader challenge. So they established Cider to help the security and engineering teams bridge the gaps that they had when they were trying to implement security as part of the engineering ecosystem.

The company says Cider’s AppSec Operating System is the first of its kind and is presently being used by dozens of global companies such as Databricks, Rapid7, Built Technologies, Lemonade, Rapyd, and more.

Nucleai

Using AI to leverage data in order to develop new treatments for cancer and other diseases is the future of drug development and treatment and Nucleai is at the forefront. The Tel Aviv-based company has developed an AI-powered precision oncology platform that leverages unique tissue datasets to produce insights into cancer biology, increasing the efficacy of clinical trials and improving patient care.

Last March, the company partnered with Sheba Medical Center’s ARC (Accelerate, Redesign, Collaborate) innovation complex so that the Nucleai team would be able to access Sheba’s extensive repository of pathology, clinical, and other multi-omics data. The partnership expanded on Nucleai and Sheba’s existing collaboration to identify histological biomarkers that predict response to immunotherapy in non-small-cell lung cancer patients. 

Nucleai has raised $50 million to date.

RiseUp

“RiseUp provides families with the opportunity to change their story about money – something that is very difficult to do alone due to the cumbersome and impenetrable financial system,” said Yuval Samet, CEO and founder of RiseUp, when the company announced it had completed a $30 million Series B funding round last month, bringing its total funding to more than $50 million.

In a world where individuals are always worrying about their budgets, RiseUp’s platform makes it clear and easy to understand. Founded in 2017, RiseUp analyzes a user’s spending data to predict future transactions, generates a snapshot of their financial situation, and sends it to the customer via WhatsApp’s messaging service. This enables users to better manage their expenses and save money on a more consistent basis. RiseUp was the first startup to initiate open banking partnerships in Israel, and it currently collaborates with Bank Discount and Bank Leumi 

Eco Wave Power

With the constant and natural motion of waves, our oceans and seas present a massive potential for generating renewable energy. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), “the theoretical annual energy potential of waves off the coasts of the United States [alone] is estimated to be as much as 2.64 trillion kilowatt-hours or the equivalent of about 66% of U.S. electricity generation in 2020.” 

Founded in 2011, Israeli energy-tech company Eco Wave Power developed an innovative technology to produce clean electricity from waves. The award-winning tech is made up of specially designed floaters attached to coastal structures like piers and jetties. The up-and-down motion of the waves lifts and lowers the floaters, which compresses and decompresses hydraulic pistons that pressurize hydraulic fluid. With enough pressure, the fluid is discharged to mechanically rotate a hydraulic motor, which a generator then converts into electricity before being transmitted to the electrical grid. The fluid is then looped back to the pistons creating a closed circular system.   

This past April, Eco Wave Power signed a deal with Port Adriano in Spain to construct a power station that would generate up to 2 megawatts of clean electricity, helping Spain, a country with over 8,000 km of coastline, achieve its 74 percent renewable energy target for 2030.

The company pioneered the wave-energy field in 2016 starting with a small pilot project located in Gibraltar to test its energy-generating capabilities as well as its built-in storm-protection mechanism over the course of several years. After successfully supplying as much as 15 percent of local electricity needs, the company announced this past March that it will relocate the energy conversion unit to the AltaSea premises at the Port of Los Angeles to upgrade its floaters ahead of its US market entry. Meanwhile, Eco Wave Power is in talks with the government of Gibraltar to augment its prior operations.  

CytoReason

Big data and machine learning are taking the health world by storm, but who would have thought that one day, instead of complex and time-consuming clinical trials conducted in state-of-the-art labs with expensive toolkits for pharmaceutical drug development, we would see a technology that can predict the effectiveness of drugs on patients, without exposing them to unnecessary risk?

Key to this breakthrough achieved by the 2016 established company CytoReason is the throve of clinical data amassed over the years. . “Every year, hundreds of thousands of clinical trials are conducted,” CytoReason CEO David Harel tells NoCamels in an email, “That’s a lot of data. And yet, it still takes over 10 years to bring a new drug to market, and 90 percent of drugs in development ultimately fail.”

The company’s unique machine learning platform can quantify a person’s immune system at the cellular level, run simulations, and in so doing establish how a patient will respond to certain treatments which in turn should facilitate the development of more effective drugs.

And big pharmaceutical and biotech companies, like Pfizer, are starting to notice. In February, Pfizer announced it would extend its current collaboration agreement with the Israeli biotech firm. CytoReason first announced its cooperation with Pfizer in early 2019 to leverage the Israeli company’s cell-centered models of the immune system and diseases in order to develop innovative drugs. Since the start of the collaboration, CytoREason said it has provided Pfizer with “multiple insights in a number of R&D programs across over 20 diseases.”

Researchers develop a machine learning technology that rectifies the effects of underrepresentation of women in clinical trials.

It is an open secret that women are underrepresented in clinical trials of new pharmaceuticals and other medical treatments. This has a significant impact on the female half of the population.

A new article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association by computer scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in collaboration with Plia Gillis of Tel Aviv University and Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research, describes the problems caused by this bias and presents a machine-learning remedy.

“Nowadays, we know that different population groups react differently to a given treatment – in particular, women can have a different reaction than men to a treatment,” said Shunit Agmon, the PhD candidate who conducted the research with Technion alumna and visiting professor Kira Radinsky.

“For example, Zolpidem, a drug used to treat sleeping problems, clears more slowly in women and therefore it is important to prescribe a smaller dose for women than for men – which was discovered only after the drug was released to the market,” said Agmon.

“The underrepresentation of women in clinical trials creates a problematic bias that harms the quality of women’s healthcare, including misdiagnosed diseases and adverse drug reactions.”

The gender gap in clinical trials can be traced to traumatic events including the Thalidomide affair – a drug that caused numerous birth defects when prescribed to pregnant women to alleviate morning sickness in the early 1960s. This tragedy led to a drastic decline in female participants in clinical trials.

In 1993, laws were passed in the United States that mandated the inclusion of women in clinical trials and the analysis of results with regard to gender. Yet, female underrepresentation remained a prevalent phenomenon. Agmon said other population groups are also underrepresented, including certain age groups, ethnic groups, and other demographics.

In some cases, there is also an underrepresentation of men in trials seeking treatments for conditions considered “women’s diseases,” such as fibromyalgia.

Algorithm corrects gender bias

In recent years, machine learning models have been introduced to improve medical diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. However, Agmon claims that “many of these models are based on biased trials and therefore they ‘inherit’ their biases, and in some cases even amplify them.”

The researchers experimented with machine learning methods including natural language processing (NLP) and word embedding, which enable computers to “understand” texts. They used these tools to analyze 16,772 articles from the PubMed database. Each was allotted a “weight” based on the percentage of women in the clinical trials described in the article.

Their work led to the development of an algorithm that enables gender-sensitive use of clinical literature. This algorithm corrects the gender bias and improves the treatments’ suitability for female patients.

The algorithm succeeded in substantially improving predictions for women in various situations, including length of hospitalization, re-hospitalization within a month, and correlation between various diseases.

Although the model focused on improving predictions for women, it also significantly improved overall clinical predictions for men as well.

The researchers’ goal is to increase awareness of the problems of underrepresentation in research in general and in clinical trials in particular, and to inspire additional solutions to improve the quality of personalized medicine.

Agmon, who earned her bachelor’s degree in the Technion’s Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science, worked for Google for two years and then returned to pursue a master’s degree under the supervision of Prof. Assaf Schuster. Now she is earning her doctorate under the supervision of Radinsky and Prof. Benny Kimelfeld.

Israeli startup OncoHost predicts which specialized therapies will be most effective for late-stage cancer

Cancer care is hit or miss. While some treatments can help specific patients, the same therapy could also have no effect or even cause further damage to others. A new blood test developed by an Israeli company offers doctors an additional layer of information to help decide which cancer treatments can work for each patient.

OncoHost’s PROphet blood test is aimed at patients with late-stage non-small-cell lung cancer. New technologies for cancer treatment can be highly effective, but only for certain patients. Often, doctors have no way of knowing which will work until the patient is months into the treatment.

“A physician considering a treatment for his patients that includes immunotherapy can run the test in order to get better visibility on what the patient’s journey will look like,” says Dr. Ofer Sharon, the CEO of OncoHost. “We want to allow the clinicians to make the decisions earlier and add valuable clinical insights to support the complex decision-making process that every oncologist faces when treating a patient with advanced cancer.”

With just one blood test, PROphet analyzes over 7,000 proteins, and then uses machine-learning tools and artificial intelligence to characterize, analyze, and anticipate which treatment is likely to work based on a patient’s individual patterns. It can also help doctors decide on alternative therapies that could be used to overcome a patient’s resistance.

This information is critical for cancer patients whose doctors are considering immunotherapy — a highly effective alternative to chemotherapy — which strengthens the immune system to fight off the cancer rather than attacking the cancer cells directly. But immunotherapy only works for a minority of patients. Until now, doctors had little way of knowing which patients would respond.

The test predicts outcomes with remarkably high accuracy at three months, six months, and one-year markers. The clinical validation of the PROphet platform is based on trials of more than 700 patients at 35 sites around the world conducted by OncoHost. As the database of patient profiles expands, the tests will get even more accurate.

“They can really profile the patients into groups of patients that will respond to the treatment and those that will not respond. It looks rather promising,” says Aaron Ciechanover, Nobel laureate in chemistry and distinguished research professor in the faculty of medicine at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, who is a member of OncoHost’s board of scientific advisers.

“The idea is to predict ahead of time biological markers in the treatment of tumors,” Prof. Ciechanover says. “As we know, people are different from one another. Each of us reacts differently to different drugs. The idea is to find a profile of proteins and other components that predict with high certainty whether the treatment that you are giving a patient will be successful or not.”

“Until now, cancer treatment has been what I call one-size-fits-all. We bombarded the patient with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, with enormous side effects,” Ciechanover says. “Now we are narrowing it. We are going to be much more precise. We are going to provide treatment that has much fewer side effects. And we may discover new pathways that are involved in carcinogenesis, enabling us to develop new drugs.”

Ciechanover and Sharon will be among the speakers at “Investing in Precision Medicine,” an online event hosted by OurCrowd on March 28.

OncoHost is collaborating with leading academic and clinical partners including the Mayo Clinic, University of Miami, Roswell Park, Rutgers, Somalogic, and the National Health Service in the UK.

“Success with immunotherapy is not guaranteed in every patient, so this study is seeking to identify changes in proteins circulating in the blood which may help doctors to choose the best treatment for each patient,” says Dr. David Farrugia, an NHS consultant medical oncologist and chief investigator of all eight NHS clinical trial sites in the UK.

OncoHost plans to expand to providing tests for other common cancers, Sharon says, including urogenital cancers and head and neck cancers, as well as autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, cirrhosis, and lupus.

OncoHost’s technology is part of the groundbreaking field of precision medicine, where treatment is individualized to each patient. Previously, precision medicine was focused on DNA markers and mutations, but this is a static picture, Sharon explains. By focusing on blood proteins, the PROphet test allows doctors a much more dynamic, real-time analysis of how a course of medicine is expected to interact with a patient over time.

“When we run a blood test before treatment, we can predict the disease’s trajectory,” Sharon says. “When we measure proteins, by proxy we’re measuring biological processes. It’s that downstream view that allows us to get a very wide picture on the interaction between the tumor, the patient’s body, and the therapy.”

OncoHost opened a new laboratory facility in North Carolina in January and is planning to launch commercially in the US this year. The company is also in talks to open a regional lab in Abu Dhabi. Its financial trajectory is also looking up, with revenues projected to increase sevenfold over the next two years.

Meet the army of cells that make up the body’s health-protection squad

Your immune system is probably something you ignore, at least until you get ill. Then you realize how important the immune system is. It’s all the various organs, cells and proteins spread throughout the body that protect us from bacteria, viruses and other potentially harmful invaders.

Cells of the immune system can be split into two closely related military squads: innate and adaptive. Troops belonging to the first — innate — patrol the body to detect intruders, such as bacteria and viruses. These troops don’t trust anyone, not even their own body’s cells. But they don’t have to fend off bad guys alone. When faced by a tough adversary, they can call in back-ups — the adaptive troops — that are skilled in even heavy combat.

Naama Geva-Zatorsky works at the Rappaport Technion Integrated Cancer Center in Haifa, Israel. There, she studies microbes and the immune system. The mission of the body’s innate immune system, she explains, is to distinguish between friendly cells (the body’s own cells) and intruders (non-self). Friendlies have specific structures on their surface, like a flag, that the innate troops recognize. They know to ignore these cells. Intruders lack those familiar surface “flags” found on the body’s healthy cells.

When innate troops detect “non-self” structures — such as a virus — they set off alarms. These call out other troops to help eliminate the intruders as quickly as possible. The three most important types of innate troops are immune cells known as neutrophils (NEW-troh-fils), macrophages (MAK-roh-faeges) and dendritic cells.

Neutrophils survey their neighborhood by “tasting” microbes. When they find an intruder, these troops release small signalling molecules called cytokines (SY-toh-kynes). Cytokines quickly recruit help to the developing fight. They tell other immune cells what type of help they need and where to send it. Sometimes neutrophils also change shape. They sprout long arms and form a web-like net to trap invaders.    

Macrophages are bigger, curly-shaped cells that respond to the neutrophil alarms. They hang out in the tissues longer than the neutrophils do. While there, they gobble up as many invaders as possible through a process called phagocytosis (Fag-oh-sy-TOH-sis). Macrophages won’t stop eating until nothing is left. 

Dendritic cells arrive around the same time as macrophages. Dendritic cells digest pieces of microbes and then show them out on their long arms. In this way they recruit a back-up squad into the battle: the adaptive immune system.

The back-up forces

The heavy forces of the adaptive immune system don’t get involved with every little invader. Most of the time, innate immune cells can win the battle by themselves. We don’t even notice it happening. However, when worrisome pathogens invade our bodies, cells of the adaptive immune system take over. They tailor their particular response to each invader but need a few days to make much headway. 

Sometimes intruders sneak into the body and take over some healthy cell. That’s where it will multiply (or replicate). But once inside, that invader is also hidden. The innate cells can no longer find it.

Helper T cells, a type of white blood cell —or lymphocyte — now step in. They collect info on the enemy, regardless of whether those attackers are inside of a cell or out. Then they’ll pass this intel along to another team, the killer T cells.

Killer T cells are another type of lymphocyte. They can kill anything that looks suspicious.

B cells release weapons called antibodies that seek out the enemy. Antibodies, which are families of Y-shaped proteins, are sticky. They glom onto everything that resembles the intruder. In many cases this will be the actual invader. Other times it might be pieces left behind when the intruders are killed. They might even be invader look-alikes created by vaccines. These invader mimics will allow B cells to respond quicker if ever a real microbial invader comes along.

The antibodies tag their target cells so that other immune-system teams can later go in and take them out. Antibodies will also stalk escaping enemies throughout the body. Those antibodies seek out surface patterns on cells or cell bits that identify specific intruders.

After a battle is over, invader-specific B cells remain behind. They form a pool of veterans. They preserve a memory of the former invasion. Based on that living memory, they’ll be able to help the body react faster and better the next time the same type of invader arrives. This process is called immunological memory and it’s the key to how vaccines work.

“When an invader comes in the body, it’s great to have an alert immune system,” says Naama. “But it’s also important that it doesn’t overdo.” There are several ways to stop such an overblown response.

Regulatory T cells, for instance, tamp down the activity of other T cells, before they get out of control. During a skirmish, T cells can get so keyed up that they risk getting out of control. That’s where T-reg squads come in. They help calm down the T-cell combat troops so that the immune system can return to normal.

The immune system helps keep us safe. We can also exploit it against deadly diseases thanks to vaccines and immune-boosting drugs. “The immune system is cool, but we need to keep it healthy,” says Naama. How? Look after yourself. A healthy body means a healthy immune system. 

This video explains how cells in the innate and adaptive immune squads cooperate to fight invading pathogens — such as disease-causing microbes.

Power Words

agent: A person or thing (it can be a chemical or even a form of energy) that plays some role in getting something done.

antibodies: Any of a large number of proteins that the body produces from B cells and releases into the blood supply as part of its immune response. The production of antibodies is triggered when the body encounters an antigen, some foreign material. Antibodies then lock onto antigens as a first step in disabling the germs or other foreign substances that were the source of those antigens.

B cell: A type of small white blood cell (also known as a B lymphocyte), which plays an important role in the immune system. Made in the bone marrow, these cells mature into plasma cells, and serve as the source of antibodies.

bacteria: (singular: bacterium) Single-celled organisms. These dwell nearly everywhere on Earth, from the bottom of the sea to inside other living organisms (such as plants and animals). Bacteria are one of the three domains of life on Earth.

cell: (in biology) The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Typically too small to see with the unaided eye, it consists of a watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. Depending on their size, animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells. Most organisms, such as yeasts, molds, bacteria and some algae, are composed of only one cell.

cytokine: A small protein secreted by certain cells of the immune system which the body uses to have some particular controlling effect on other cells. Examples include interferons, interleukins and growth factors.

dendritic cell: A type of immune system cell that initiates the primary response to a foreign substance.

digest: (noun: digestion) To break down food into simple compounds that the body can absorb and use for growth. Some sewage-treatment plants harness microbes to digest — or degrade — wastes so that the breakdown products can be recycled for use elsewhere in the environment.

force: Some outside influence that can change the motion of a body, hold bodies close to one another, or produce motion or stress in a stationary body.

germ: Any one-celled microorganism, such as a bacterium or fungal species, or a virus particle. Some germs cause disease. Others can promote the health of more complex organisms, including birds and mammals. The health effects of most germs, however, remain unknown. 

honey: A viscous (gooey) material that honeybees store in their honeycombs. The bees make it from nectar.

immune: (adj.) Having to do with immunity. (v.) Able to ward off a particular infection. Alternatively, this term can be used to mean an organism shows no impacts from exposure to a particular poison or process. More generally, the term may signal that something cannot be hurt by a particular drug, disease or chemical.

immune system: The collection of cells and their responses that help the body fight off infections and deal with foreign substances that may provoke allergies.

innate: An adjective for some behavior, attitude or response that is natural, or inborn, and doesn’t have to be learned.

macrophage: A type of white blood cell dispatched by the immune system. Like janitors of the body, they gobble up germs, wastes and debris for disposal. These cells also stimulate other immune cells by exposing them to small bits of the invaders.

microbe: Short for microorganism. A living thing that is too small to see with the unaided eye, including bacteria, some fungi and many other organisms such as amoebas. Most consist of a single cell.

molecule: An electrically neutral group of atoms that represents the smallest possible amount of a chemical compound. Molecules can be made of single types of atoms or of different types.

neutrophil: A type of white blood cell released by the immune system. It gobbles up wastes and release chemicals that can digest cells, including germs.

pathogen: An organism that causes disease.

primary: An adjective meaning major, first or most important.

protein: A compound made from one or more long chains of amino acids. Proteins are an essential part of all living organisms. They form the basis of living cells, muscle and tissues; they also do the work inside of cells. Among the better-known, stand-alone proteins are the hemoglobin (in blood) and the antibodies (also in blood) that attempt to fight infections. Medicines frequently work by latching onto proteins.

recruit: (verb) To enroll a new member into some group. It could be into the military. Or it could be into participating in a research group to test some drug, behavior or environmental condition.

replicate: (in biology) To copy something. When viruses make new copies of themselves — essentially reproducing — this process is called replication.

risk: The chance or mathematical likelihood that some bad thing might happen.

survey: To view, examine, measure or evaluate something, often land or broad aspects of a landscape.

SWAT: Acronym for special weapons and tactics. It’s a term for the type of heavily armored, combat troops who can support or even take over for patrol officers and detectives in challenging conditions.

system: A network of parts that together work to achieve some function. For instance, the blood, vessels and heart are primary components of the human body’s circulatory system. Similarly, trains, platforms, tracks, roadway signals and overpasses are among the potential components of a nation’s railway system. System can even be applied to the processes or ideas that are part of some method or ordered set of procedures for getting a task done.

T cells: A family of white blood cells, also known as lymphocytes, that are primary actors in the immune system. They fight disease and can help the body deal with harmful substances.

tag: (in immunology) A chemical change that allows the immune system to identify cells or other material that it should attack and disable or remove.

vaccine: (v. vaccinate) A biological mixture that resembles a disease-causing agent. It is given to help the body create immunity to a particular disease. The injections used to administer most vaccines are known as vaccinations.

virus: Tiny infectious particles consisting of genetic material (RNA or DNA) surrounded by protein. Viruses can reproduce only by injecting their genetic material into the cells of living creatures. Although scientists frequently refer to viruses as live or dead, in fact many scientists argue that no virus is truly alive. It doesn’t eat like animals do, or make its own food the way plants do. It must hijack the cellular machinery of a living cell in order to survive.

An Israeli research group says its artificially intelligent antibiotic-prescribing algorithm can cut the risk of antibiotic resistance by half.

Antibiotics are essential to curing bacterial infections, but their overuse promotes the appearance and proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

“We wanted to understand how antibiotic resistance emerges during treatment and find ways to better tailor antibiotic treatment for each patient to not only correctly match the patient’s current infection susceptibility but also to minimize their risk of infection recurrence and … resistance to treatment,” said Roy Kishony from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

The group focused on two common bacterial infections — urinary tract infections and wound infections — to show how each patient’s past infection history can be used to choose the best antibiotic to reduce the chance of antibiotic resistance emerging.

“As most infections are seeded from a patient’s own microbiota, these resistance-gaining recurrences can be predicted using the patient’s past infection history and minimized by machine learning [with] personalized antibiotic recommendations, offering a means to reduce the emergence and spread of resistant pathogens,” the researchers said.

They used genomic sequencing techniques and machine learning analysis of patient records to develop this approach, described in the journal Science.

“We found that the antibiotic susceptibility of the patient’s past infections could be used to predict their risk of returning with a resistant infection following antibiotic treatment,” said lead author Mathew Stracy.

“Using this data, together with the patient’s demographics like age and gender, allowed us to develop the algorithm.”

The study was a collaboration involving Kishony and physicians Varda Shalev, Gabriel Chodick and Jacob Kuint at Maccabi KSM Research and Innovation Center. Maccabi is one of Israel’s four national health maintenance organizations.

The hope is that this algorithm could be used at the point of care to improve treatment and minimize the spread of resistant bacteria.

The CDC describes antibiotic resistance as “one of the world’s most urgent public health problems,” noting that it “has the potential to affect people at any stage of life, as well as the healthcare, veterinary and agriculture industries.”

In its 2019 Antibiotic Resistance Threats Report, it said more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur each year in the United States, resulting in the deaths of more than 35,000 people.

When Clostridioides difficile — a bacterium associated with antibiotic use that is not typically resistant but can cause deadly bouts of diarrhea — is added to these figures, the reported U.S. toll exceeds 3 million infections and 48,000 deaths.