Inexpensive, fast method to make freeform optics could benefit applications from eyewear to telescopes.
Researchers have developed a way to create freeform optical components by shaping a volume of curable liquid polymer. The new method is poised to enable faster prototyping of customized optical components for a variety of applications including corrective lenses, augmented and virtual reality, autonomous vehicles, medical imaging, and astronomy.
Common devices such as eyeglasses or cameras rely on lenses – optical components with spherical or cylindrical surfaces, or slight deviations from such shapes. However, more advanced optical functionalities can be obtained from surfaces with complex topographies. Currently, fabricating such freeform optics is very difficult and expensive because of the specialized equipment required to mechanically process and polish their surfaces.
“Our approach to making freeform optics achieves extremely smooth surfaces and can be implemented using basic equipment that can be found in most labs,” said research team leader Moran Bercovici from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. “This makes the technology very accessible, even in low resource settings.”
In Optica, Optica Publishing Group’s journal for high-impact research, Bercovici and colleagues show that their new technique can be used to fabricate freeform components with sub-nanometer surface roughness in just minutes. Unlike other prototyping methods such as 3D printing, the fabrication time remains short even if the volume of the manufactured component increases.
Freeform optical components with sub-nanometer surface roughness are fabricated within minutes by shaping liquid volumes. Credit: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
“Currently, optical engineers pay tens of thousands of dollars for specially designed freeform components and wait months for them to arrive,” said Omer Luria, one of the contributors to the paper. “Our technology is poised to radically decrease both the waiting time and the cost of complex optical prototypes, which could greatly speed up the development of new optical designs.”
From eyeglasses to complex optics
The researchers decided to develop the new method after learning that 2.5 billion people around the world don’t have access to corrective eyewear. “We set out to find a simple method for fabricating high quality optical components that does not rely on mechanical processing or complex and expensive infrastructure,” said Valeri Frumkin, who first developed the method in Bercovici’s lab. “We then discovered that we could expand our method to produce much more complex and interesting optical topographies.”
One of the primary challenges in making optics by curing a liquid polymer is that for optics larger than about 2 millimeters, gravity dominates over surface forces, which causes the liquid to flatten into a puddle. To overcome this, the researchers developed a way to fabricate lenses using liquid polymer that is submerged in another liquid. The buoyancy counteracts gravity, allowing surface tension to dominate.
With gravity out of the picture, the researchers could fabricate smooth optical surfaces by controlling the surface topography of the lens liquid. This entails injecting the lens liquid into a supportive frame so that the lens liquid wets the inside of the frame and then relaxes into a stable configuration. Once the required topography is achieved, the lens liquid can be solidified by UV exposure or other methods to complete the fabrication process.
After using the liquid fabrication method to make simple spherical lenses, the researchers expanded to optical components with various geometries — including toroid and trefoil shapes — and sizes up to 200 mm. They show that the resulting lenses exhibited surface qualities similar to the best polishing technologies available while being orders of magnitude quicker and simpler to make. In the work published in Optica, they further expanded the method to create freeform surfaces, by modifying the shape of the supportive frame.
Infinite possibilities
“We identified an infinite range of possible optical topographies that can be fabricated using our approach,” said Mor Elgarisi, the paper’s lead author. “The method can be used to make components of any size, and because liquid surfaces are naturally smooth, no polishing is required. The approach is also compatible with any liquid that can be solidified and has the advantage of not producing any waste.”
The researchers are now working to automate the fabrication process so that various optical topographies can be made in a precise and repeatable way. They are also experimenting with various optical polymers to find out which ones produce the best optical components.
Reference: “Fabrication of freeform optical components by fluidic shaping” by M. Elgarisi, V. Frumkin, O. Luria, M. Bercovici, 18 November 2021, Optica. DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.438763
In mice with active inflammation, suppressing the neurons that remembered it produced an immediate reduction in the inflammation.
Your phone pings. It’s a message from a friend you met for drinks last night, who just tested positive for Covid-19.
Your throat starts feeling scratchy. A short cough sputters out. Is your body temperature rising? You run to take a PCR test. When the results come back negative, you realize it was all in your head — a psychosomatic response.
Researchers from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa wanted to explore the connection between the brain’s perception of illness and the real thing.
They induced inflammation in mice, and after the inflammation subsided, the researchers triggered the neurons in the mice’s brains that were active during the initial inflammation.
The result was dramatic: The inflammation re-emerged in the same area as before. Simply “remembering” the inflammation was enough to reactivate it.
The researchers then wondered: If the brain can generate disease, can the brain also turn it off?
The answer was a resounding yes. In mice with active inflammation, suppressing the neurons that remembered it produced an immediate reduction in the inflammation.
MD-PhD student Tamar Koren, left, and Prof. Asya Rolls. Photo by Nitzan Zohar/Technion Spokesperson’s Office
There’s no guarantee this experiment would work in human beings. But it raises the possibility of a new therapeutic avenue for treating chronic inflammatory conditions such as Crohn’s disease and psoriasis.
The brain’s ability to bring on illness psychosomatically is more a feature than a bug, explained Prof. Asya Rolls, of the Technion’s Faculty of Medicine.
“The body needs to respond to infection as quickly as possible before the attacking bacteria or viruses can multiply,” she said.
“If certain activity – for example consuming particular foods – has exposed the body to infection and inflammation once, there is an advantage to gearing up for battle when one is about to engage in the same activity again. A shorter response time would allow the body to defeat the infection faster and with less effort.”
The research was led by Tamar Koren, an MD-PhD student in Rolls’ lab. Other participants included Dr. Kobi Rosenblum of the University of Haifa and Dr. Fahed Hakim of EMMS Hospital in Nazareth.
The study was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, the Allen and Jewel Prince Center for Neurodegenerative Disorders of the Brain, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the Wellcome Trust.
Can our brain make our body sick? Likely yes, Israeli research shows
Technion scientists uncovered how neurons can trigger physiological responses in the body that translate in real illnesses but might also help treat them.
Insular neurons (in red) that were captured during colitis and reactivated (in green) upon recovery. Lower panel: Colon sections showing white blood cells (in red) present in the tissue of a mouse after insular neurons reactivation (Gq, right) and its non-activated control.
(photo credit: NITZAN ZOHAR/TECHNION SPOKESPERSON’S OFFICE)
Can our brain trigger an actual illness in the body? New research by Technion-Israel Institute of Technology scientists conducted on mice suggests that the answer is likely yes.
Over the years, the intuitive idea that the brain exercises a significant influence on people’s physical well-being has been supported by increasing scientific evidence.
“Several years ago, we studied the mechanism behind the placebo effect, demonstrating that when people experience a positive expectation, their conditions improve in many ways,” Technion Prof. Asya Rolls said.
“We were able to show that by activating brain areas that are related to positive expectations, we would boost the immune response,” she said. “What amazed us was how precise this response was, and therefore we thought that the brain could not have such an exact control of the system without knowing what its status is.”
The researchers started to examine whether the brain is able to represent the status of the immune system.
Professor Asya Rolls (credit: NITZAN ZOHAR/TECHNION SPOKESPERSON’S OFFICE)
The new study was led by Rolls and her MD/PhD student Tamar Koren and was conducted in cooperation with Dr. Kobi Rosenblum of the University of Haifa and Dr. Fahed Hakim of EMMS Nazareth Hospital. The results were published in the journal Cell on Monday.
The scientists checked which areas of the brain would be activated when mice experienced genetically induced colon inflammation. Among others, the insular cortex – which is responsible for sensations such as thirst, hunger and pain and other manifestations of the body’s physiological state – presented increased neurological activity.
“When we reactivated the same neurons afterward, we recorded the same inflammatory response,” Rolls said. “It was quite shocking.”
The results offer evidence that the brain contains a representation of the immune system, and it can reactivate it when presented with specific stimuli and possibly other forms of memories, the researchers said.
The brain does not cause the body to be reinfected by a pathogen, but it might potentially trigger a reaction in the body similar to the one caused by the original infection, they said.
“We have to remember that, many times, the damage to the body is not caused by the pathogen itself but, rather, by the immune system’s reaction to it,” Rolls said.
The mechanism may help explain what triggers psychosomatic disorders, which are health problems that appear without any apparent biological cause, the researchers found. Autoimmune diseases or other conditions, such as Crohn’s disease, could also be based on a similar process.
It would be wrong to assume that the results obtained from the study on mice will translate in humans in the exact same way, Rolls said.
However, there is hope that the research can contribute to understanding better how certain diseases work and how to treat them, possibly by inhibiting the neurons from activating and triggering the inflammation.
“There are many ways we can control neuronal activities in the human brain, for example, through magnetic or electrical stimulation or by neurofeedback when a person learns how to control their neurons on their own,” Rolls said.
“We know that we can do it because we know the power of a psychosomatic effect,” she said. “For example, during the clinical trial of the COVID vaccine, many people who received the placebo experienced very similar side effects to those who received the actual vaccine. Clearly, this was caused by some mental process resulting in a physiological response.”
Israeli scientists from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have developed an artificial molecule that could inhibit the development of Alzheimer’s disease, conceivably paving the way for better treatment of the disease.
The Technion scientists collaborated with The French National Centre for Scientific Research (CRNS) and published their findings in the weekly peer-reviewed Angewandte Chemie scientific journal published on behalf of the German Chemical Society.
The study was led by Professor Galia Maayan and doctoral student Anastasia Behar from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion, in collaboration with Prof. Christelle Hureau from the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination du CNRS, Toulouse, France.
Professor Galia Maayan of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Courtesy.
The findings showed that an accumulation of copper ions, when interacting with the amyloid beta (Aβ) can lead to cell toxicity, causing dangerous conditions, including degenerative diseases of the brain, like Alzheimer’s. This accumulation of copper disrupts the removal of the Aβ , a peptide linked to the plaques that form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.
A 2013 study appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal written by a group led by Rashid Deane, a research professor in the University of Rochester’s Medical Center department of neurosurgery, said that copper accumulation in the body increases the progression of Alzheimer’s disease by preventing toxic proteins from leaving the brain. More specifically, copper ion interaction with the Aβ promotes ROS, or reactive oxygen species, highly reactive chemicals formed from oxygen. The production of ROS due to metal ions, like copper, leads to oxidative damages to the Aβ peptide and the potential formation of amyloid plaque.
Researchers have learned that the breakdown of the copper- Aβ complex and the removal of copper from the amyloid, prevents cells’ death and inhibition of the disease. The extraction of copper is done by a process called chelation or using molecules that bind the copper ions and extract them from the amyloid.
Developing the foundation
Technion Chemistry Professor Galia Maayan did not begin her career by studying copper ion accumulation and its impact on degenerative diseases. Instead, she simply focused on the molecule.
“I’m a chemist. So I look at a molecule and I said, ‘Oh I have this molecule, I have this metal ion, in this case, copper, how can I design something that is selective for copper?’ And then I will think about other applications,” she tells NoCamels, “When I did my postdoc at NYU, I learned a lot about these peptide mimics or peptoids. I developed chelators that are not selective [to specific metal ions.]”
Doctoral student Anastasia Behar of the Technion. Courtesy.
Prof. Maayan developed the foundation for copper and zinc-binding of peptoids and investigated how peptoids bound them — something she says no one had ever done up to that point — but it wasn’t until she met her first PhD student, Maria Baskin, (another author of the paper), that she understood that the molecules could be good for chelating metal ions related to specific diseases.
“We discussed copper, and then we started to think about Alzheimer’s,” she says, “and then we started to work on it.”
Prof. Maayan and Baskin developed the first generation of chelator molecules selective to copper. But they were not water soluble, she explains. “In order to start making the drugs you want to develop, you need your molecule to be, at least to a certain extent, water soluble.”
The Technion researchers developed their own method of making the molecule water soluble, without changing its shape or organization and patented the result. Thus, a water soluble peptoid chelator was created that could still selectively bind copper. Meanwhile, Anastasia Behar, who joined Prof. Maayan’s lab while completing her Master’s in Chemistry at the Technion, was sent to France for three months to work with CRNS after Prof. Maayan made a connection with Prof. Christelle Hureau.
Behar tells NoCamels that in France, the researchers created targeted environments where they could simulate processes in the brain where the accumulation of metals bound to Aβ was happening.
“Then we added our molecule and tested if it can interact with the amyloid-beta, take out the copper, and stop the radical production, which the molecule did eventually,” she explains.
“While working on the molecule, Nastia [Anastasia] learned how to do biochemical experiments to show the biology that the molecule can do. All of the things that we think can lead us toward future development of peptoids as drugs for Alzheimer’s,” Prof. Maayan said.
The Technion researchers developed their own method of making the molecule water soluble, without changing its scaffold or the way it was organized. This was tested in France. The water soluble peptoid chelator, a synthetic molecule dubbed P3, was able to perform its task selectively. It strongly binds copper and forms CuP3, extracting the copper from the amyloid. By doing this, it inhibits and even suppresses the formation of harmful oxidizing agents, without creating new processes, which neutralize amyloid toxicity.
Prof. Maayan says it’s important to note that the molecule that the researchers established is not the actual molecule they would like to be used when creating drug treatments for Alzheimer’s.
“It has solubility issues, stability issues. This is not a molecule we’re going to develop. This is just a base,” she tells NoCamels, “We are going to take it further and develop more and more molecules that will be better. Right now we’ve just put down the foundation and this is the breakthrough. We will make molecules that are more feasible later on.”
The next step, Prof. Maayan explains, is to go beyond the mimicking of an environment of a cell or of the brain in terms of a PH solution and to do more in-vitro experiments, or experiments with cells.
“We’ll do some in vitro experiments, then we will optimize the chemistry again, and then go back to in vitro until we are ready to go in vivo [with a living organism.],” she says, “It’s a long process. It can take several years, but we see the way so it’s not vague. We see the way and we now know what we need to do.”
Since the new algorithm was introduced, Maccabi health fund doctors have treated tens of thousands of UTI cases, and there has been a drop of around 35% in the need to switch antibiotics following the development of bacterial resistance to the drug prescribed.
Doctors at Israel’s Maccabi national health fund have recently begun working with an Artificial Intelligence-based predictive algorithm that advises doctors in the process of deciding on personalized antibiotic treatment for patients.
The new algorithm was developed by the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology together with KSM (Kahn-Sagol-Maccabi), the Maccabi Research and Innovation Center.
Maccabi chose to focus its first diagnoses on urinary tract infection – the most common bacterial infection among women. Around 30% of females suffer from the infection at least once during their lifetime, and up to 10% experience recurrent infections. Until now, in most cases, general treatment has been administered based on clinical guidelines and medical judgment. Sometimes, the bacteria prove to be antibiotic-resistant, resulting in the need to change the treatment plan.
Since the new algorithm was introduced, Maccabi doctors have treated tens of thousands of cases, and there has been a drop of around 35% in the need to switch antibiotics following the development of bacterial resistance to the drug prescribed.
This is significant because accuracy in the choice of antibiotics is far greater thanks to the new technology. In light of the success of this new development in the treatment of UTI, Maccabi has begun working on the development of additional detection systems that will help to contend with other infectious diseases that require personalized treatment with antibiotics.
Prof. Roy Kishony of the Technion Faculty of Biology (Technion)
The automated system works by recommending the most suitable antibiotic treatment for the patient to the doctor, based on clinical guidelines and other criteria such as age, gender, pregnancy status, residence in an assisted living facility, and personal history of UTI and antibiotics administered.
The unique algorithm was developed by Prof. Roy Kishony and Dr. Idan Yelin of the Technion Faculty of Biology, in cooperation with KSM, headed by Dr. Tal Patalon, and was introduced and implemented among Maccabi’s doctors by the health fund’s Medical Informatics team and Chief Physician’s Department.
“The algorithm we developed together with Maccabi’s experts is a major milestone in personalized medicine on the way to AI-based antibiotic treatments, which are personally tailored to the patient according to the prediction of treatment response and mitigate the development of resistant bacteria,” said Kishony.
Dr. Shira Greenfield, Director of Medical Informatics at Maccabi, said: “The significance of administering personalized antibiotic treatment is that it lowers the risk of antibiotic resistance developing – a global problem which all healthcare entities are working to solve.”
Alpha Omega, a revolutionary biomedical startup from Nazareth is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars and is writing a new and fascinating chapter in Israeli high tech history
When Reem and Imad Younis launched the technological system they developed, it filled the biomedical community with hope and excitement. The system’s great potential, which started a revolution in intracranial navigation during operations, immediately captivated many. Naturally, all the excitement and wonder raised several eyebrows: when a senior Israeli brain researcher sent an exclamatory email to his colleague overseas, sharing the news of the system, the colleague asked where the company’s offices are based, and thought the researcher was joking.
The address was Maayan Mariam Square in Nazareth, a place that has long been considered a holy religious pilgrimage site for Christians, and differs drastically from the high tech hub in central Israel. The company’s idea was born in the home of young Arab engineer Imad Younis in 1993. Over the past few years, the company has become a leader in the field of surgical intracranial navigation, and has also created lab equipment for conducting brain research. The company owes its success to its founders Imad (60) and his spouse Reem (57) who opened Nazareth’s gates, turning the city into the capital of the Arab high tech industry in Israel, which today houses no less than 70 companies.
The couple founded the company in their youth (pictured). Photo: Courtesy of Younis family
Due to these impressive achievements, Reem and Imad were awarded the 2018 Industry Leaders Medal, at a special ceremony that took place at the Israeli President’s Residence in Jerusalem. But despite their breakthrough success, Alpha Omega remains private, and is owned by family, preserving its intimate character. Currently, it only employs 120 people – 48% of them women compared to the average of 33% in Israeli high tech. “We’re a small company that’s playing in the big leagues,” Imad said during an interview with Calcalist. “Our customers are Medtronic, Boston Scientific, or Abbott Laboratories, so people have high expectations from us. Surgeons who use our system don’t mind how many employees we have, or whether we’re from Nazareth or New York.”
And the number of surgeons using Alpha Omega’s smart system is growing. It already operates in over 200 different hospitals around the world, and has been used in a large number of life-changing brain surgeries.
What exactly does your system do?
“In most cases, treating neurological and psychiatric diseases is based on trial and error: the doctor tries a certain medication and examines what effect it has on the patient,” Imad explained. “It’s really difficult, because you need to play around with the dosage, which sometimes causes side effects.” In order to overcome this challenge, researchers developed the Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) process, a procedure that does not require medication in which a medical device – a neurostimulator complete with electrodes – is implanted in the brain and sends electrical impulses to specific areas of the brain. This stimulation could lessen worsening motor symptoms of neurological diseases like Parkinson’s disease or epilepsy.
Unlike a broken hand, however, which can be spotted from a mere X-ray, brain issues are far harder for doctors to diagnose, since they can’t see into the human brain. In order to do so, they must implant an electrode which can navigate the brain’s pathways, and that’s where Alpha Omega enters the picture. The company creates a separate electrode, which is inserted into the brain via a nail into the skull, and helps surgeons put together a “map” which helps point to the area that needs treatment. Alpha Omega’s technology is swift and precise, which is critical during such operations. “We simplify surgeries,” Imad specifies. “The surgeon can look at MRI images or CT scans, but deciphering neuron activity is tricky. The algorithm we developed analyzes neurotransmitters once the electrode penetrates the point of treatment, and our system builds a picture or an actual map. It enables the surgeon to find the best spot to implant the electrode.”
Once the system spots the problematic area, the surgeon can add additional electrodes (which are created by Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Abbott, and others) that remain inside the brain. A subcutaneous pacemaker, implanted later, activates the permanent electrode, which transmits nerve impulses instead of damaged nerve cells to treat the disease. “After implantation, our system gives neurologists and psychiatrists more options to treat patients: health professionals can try different medications or DBS – and send stronger or weaker pulses.”
The system starred in former Israeli government minister and Likud MK Michael (Miki) Eitan’s surgery, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Since his diagnosis four years ago, the 77-year old politician had become a shadow of his former self – no longer lively, slow-paced, bent over, and shaky. But the surgery brought him back to life, and on a segment broadcast on Israeli television last month, he was shown skipping at home, playing ping pong on the beach, and speaking with the same fluency and alertness which characterized his political career.
“My father didn’t live to receive our treatment”
While the Younis couple is goal-oriented, they’re also a charismatic duo with a sparkle in their eyes. They’re also very loyal to their employees, with nearly a third of their senior management having accompanied Alpha Omega since its founding 28 years ago. They’re also very connected to their Christian Arab community, something that is hinted at from their company’s name. Alpha Omega denotes the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet, and together serve as a godlike symbol in Christianity, signifying the beginning and end of all. But when asked why they chose such a name, Reem provides a far more prosaic explanation. “When we started the company, we didn’t intend for it to be a startup, rather just another subcontractor in the high tech industry. We thought that companies would order our equipment or services, and we’d provide them everything from A to Z – from alpha to omega.”
When Reem is in the operating room next to a Parkinson’s patient, one can only imagine she must wonder what may have been had they developed their technology earlier. Her father, Wadia, developed Parkinson’s when she was a child, and was shuttled from place to place for treatment. In 1995, after three decades of coping with the disease, he passed away, which was “only two years after we founded the company,” she says sadly at the beginning of our conversation. “He didn’t last long enough to receive our treatment. That is the irony of life.”
However, her father did manage to raise a determined woman, who loves challenges, and who never desired to belong to the mainstream. At 18, Reem began pursuing a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering at the Technion Institute of Technology, and there she met her husband, another Christian Arab, who was a senior college student and electrical engineering major.
The couple founded Alpha Omega when they were already parents to Dima, their eldest daughter, who today at 30, serves as Product Specialist and manages the company’s international marketing. Their other children also work for the company, including son, Jude, 25, as Business Development Associate and their youngest daughter, Nada, 18. In parallel, they also founded Alpha-Cad Ltd., a company that provides software solutions for engineering, which was later sold. To make an initial investment, they sold their family car and four gold coins that Imad received from his father in case of a “rainy day.”
At the beginning of their journey, the Younises cooperated with two of the leading figures in the DBS arena – doctor and brain researcher Prof. Hagai Bergman from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and French-Algerian brain surgeon Prof. Alim Louis Benabid, who is a fellow at the French Academy of Sciences.
“In Bergman’s post-doctorate which he wrote in the late 80s, he found that Parkinson’s disease could be treated in monkeys, if a small portion of their brain – termed the subthalamic nucleus – was lesioned,” Imad says. “In 1994, Benabid conducted the first such operation on a human to treat essential tremors (the most common symptom in neurological tremor disorders), but his team faced a problem: their intracranial navigation was based on CT, MRI scans, and the like, which weren’t precise enough. In 1997, we reached out to them and offered use of our navigation system which is based on neurotransmitters.” In 1999, they sold their first system in Europe, and a year later entered the U.S. market. In 2002, the Younis couple relocated to the United States for two years with their three children to open the company’s American branch.
But the company’s real turning point came two years ago: in 2019, only a year after it received its first external investment of $7 million (from the Chinese Guangzhou Sino-Israel Biotech Investment Fund earmarked for expanding the company’s operations in China), the American medical equipment company Medtronic dropped a bomb. It announced that it would be marketing Alpha Omega’s systems worldwide, and in one swift move knocked out all of the company’s market competitors, including its own. “Medtronic recognized our system’s technological and clinical advantages, and decided to abandon their own system and instead sell ours,” Imad revealed. “We are continuing to conduct our own marketing and sales, but they opened the entire world to us. That allowed us to think like leaders.”
And that thought encouraged them to spread the news of DBS around the world. “This treatment is included and covered in the standard healthcare package in Israel, the U.S., and Europe, but it only reaches 10% of the potential population it could help,” Imad says.
Actor and environmental activist contributes undisclosed amount as part of Israeli company’s recent $105m funding round
Actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio recently invested an undisclosed amount in Israeli alternative meat startup Aleph Farms, a maker of cultivated meat that grows steaks from modified cattle cells, according to an announcement on Wednesday
The investment was made as part of Aleph Farms’ $105 million Series B funding round in July.
The movie star also backed Netherlands-based alt-meat startup Mosa Meat, according to the announcement. The Dutch company unveiled the first cultured hamburger in 2013 and recently announced an $85 million funding round.
Aleph Farms, meanwhile, rolled out the first cultivated steak in 2018 and a cultivated ribeye cut earlier this year.
DiCaprio will be joining both startups as an advisor, according to the statement. The actor has long championed environmentalism with his eco-focused Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, giving out $100 million in grants for everything from lion recovery and mangrove restoration to the defense of indigenous rights and better access to affordable solar energy.
In 2019, he joined billionaire investors and philanthropists to create a new nonprofit, Earth Alliance, charged with tackling climate change and the loss of biodiversity.
“One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to transform our food system,” DiCaprio said in the statement released on Wednesday. “Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production. I’m very pleased to join them as an advisor and investor, as they prepare to introduce cultivated beef to consumers.”
Aleph Farms thin-cut steak. (Courtesy)
Dr. Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms said that “as a committed environmentalist, we welcome Leonardo DiCaprio to our advisory board and family of top-tier investors. Our team is committed to improving the sustainability of our global food systems and we’re thrilled to have Leo share in our vision.”
“With his passion for and dedication to climate action, we expect this collaboration will lead to great things together,” Toubia added in a video announcement.
“Food systems touch all people, and it will take all of us to make this change happen,” he said.
Toubia founded Aleph Farms in 2017 with Professor Shulamit Levenberg of the Biomedical Engineering Faculty at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, alongside Israeli food-tech incubator The Kitchen, a part of the Strauss Group.
To produce its meat, Aleph leverages the ability of animals to grow tissue muscle constantly and isolates the cells responsible. It then reproduces the optimal conditions for these cells to grow into tissue, basically growing meat outside the animal.
A rib-eye steak produced from meat cells cultivated in a laboratory by Israeli start-up Aleph Farms. (Courtesy: Aleph Farms/Technion Institute of Technology)
The tissue is grown in tanks that act as fermenters, similar to those in a brewery. There the cells are nurtured and shaped into a 3D structure that makes the meat.
Aleph Farms’ most recent investors include L Catterton, an American-French consumer-focused private equity firm with over $30 billion in equity capital, and DisruptAD, the venture capital arm of the Abu Dhabi holding company ADQ. The startup is also backed by a consortium of global food and meat companies, including Thai Union, BRF, and CJ CheilJedang.
The company has raised more than $110 million to date and has plans for a market launch in 2022. It signed an agreement earlier this year with Mitsubishi Corporation’s Food Industry Group to bring cultivated meat to the Japanese table.
Aleph Farms’ leadership team from left: Technion Professor Shulamit Levenberg, co-founder and chief scientific adviser; Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO; Dr. Neta Lavon, chief technology officer and VP of Research and Development. (Rami Shalosh)
The Israeli firm has also set up similar partnerships with other multinationals: The Swiss industrial group Migros and the United States-based food corporation Cargill have also invested in the startup.
Aleph Farms is a leading player in a growing Israeli food tech sector. The global cultivated meat industry could reach $25 billion by 2030, according to analyst estimates.
Leonardo DiCaprio is investing in Israel’s Aleph Farms
The actor is joining Aleph and Dutch foodtech company Mosa Meat as an investor and adviser in the growing global movement to support sustainable technologies and transform the way meat is produced
Israel’s Aleph Farms and Dutch company Mosa Meat, two foodtech companies in the emerging field of cultivated meat, announced on Wednesday an investment from environmental activist and Academy Award actor, Leonardo DiCaprio. Both companies have demonstrated their ability to grow beef directly from animal cells, with the unveiling of the first cultivated hamburger by Dutch Mosa Meat in 2013 and the first cultivated steak and ribeye by Aleph Farms in 2018 and 2021.
“One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to transform our food system. Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production. I’m very pleased to join them as an adviser and investor as they prepare to introduce cultivated beef to consumers,” DiCaprio said.
Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio is investing in Aleph Farms. Photo: Shutterstock
With global meat consumption projected to grow between 40%-70% by 2050, cultivated meat offers a solution to reduce negative impacts of industrial beef production, which uses precious sources such as land, water, and also causes harm to animals, while being a leading cause of carbon and nitrogen emissions. Cultivated meat will enable diners to enjoy the qualities of the meat they love, while eliminating the need for cutting out meat altogether. Analysts have projected the cultivated meat market could reach $25 billion by 2030, as part of the broader protein transformation.
According to an independent Life Cycle Analysis study, cultivated beef production is projected to reduce climate impact by 92%, air pollution by 93%, and use 95% less land and 78% less water when compared to industrial beef production.
“As a committed environmentalist, we welcome DiCaprio to our advisory board and family of top tier investors. Our team is committed to improving the sustainability of our global food systems and we’re thrilled to have Leo share in our vision,” Didier Toubia, co-founder and CEO of Aleph Farms said.
Aleph Farms grows beef steaks, from non-genetically engineered cells isolated from a living cow, without harming animals and with a significantly reduced impact to the environment. The company is supported by The Kitchen Hub of the Strauss Group, and Professor Shulamit Levenberg from the Biomedical Engineering Faculty at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Some of its investors include L. Catterton, DisruptAD (ADQ), BRF, Thai Union and Cargill.
Mosa Meat is a global food technology company pioneering a cleaner, kinder way of making real beef. Headquartered in Maastricht, the Netherlands, Mosa Meat is a privately-held company backed by Blue Horizon, M Ventures, Bell Food Group, Nutreco, Mitsubishi Corporation and others.
DiCaprio invests in Israeli cultivated meat co Aleph Farms
The Rehovot-based company has cultivated the world’s first slaughter-free ribeye steak, using 3D bio-printing technology.
Israeli cultivated meat company Aleph Farms has announced that the actor Leonardo DiCaprio has invested in the company and will join its advisory board. DiCaprio is also investing in Dutch cultivated meat company Mosa Meat.
DiCaprio said, “One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to transform our food system. Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production. I’m very pleased to join them as an advisor and investor, as they prepare to introduce cultivated beef to consumers.”
DiCaprio invested in Rehovot-based Aleph Farms as part of its $105 million financing round completed in July. The amount of the investment has not been disclosed.
Aleph Farms cofounder and CEO Didier Toubia said, “As a committed environmentalist, we welcome Leonardo DiCaprio to our advisory board and family of top tier investors. Our team is committed to improving the sustainability of our global food systems and we’re thrilled to have Leo share in our vision.”
Aleph Farms was founded by Israeli food company Strauss Group together with Prof. Shulamit Levenberg of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and Toubia and has cultivated the world’s first slaughter-free ribeye steak, using 3D bio-printing technology and natural building blocks of meat – real cow cells, without genetic engineering.
Leonardo DiCaprio Invests In Israeli Cultivated Meat Startup Aleph Farms
Leonardo DiCaprio at the United Nations, 2012, in a photo taken by Christopher Camp via Flickr (CC by 2.0)
Academy Award-winning actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio recently invested an undisclosed amount in Israeli startup Aleph Farms, a cultured meat startup that has created slaughter-free steak and ribeye from cattle cells. His investment was part of the company’s $105 million Series B funding round in July, according to an announcement. released on Wednesday.
He also invested in Dutch alternative meat startup Mosa Meat, Aleph Farms and Mosa Meat said in the statement. The Netherlands-based company is known for unveiling the first cultured hamburger in 2013.
Aleph Farms is also known for unveiling the “world’s first” cultivated steak in 2018 and a cultivated ribeye steak earlier this year.
“One of the most impactful ways to combat the climate crisis is to transform our food system,” DiCaprio said in the announcement, “Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms offer new ways to satisfy the world’s demand for beef, while solving some of the most pressing issues of current industrial beef production. I’m very pleased to join them as an advisor and investor, as they prepare to introduce cultivated beef to consumers.”
DiCaprio has a long association with environmental activism and social responsibility, which started early on in his career. In 1998, at the age of just 24, the Oscar-winning actor established the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) with the purpose of raising awareness about environmental issues threatening the health of the planet and to date, has awarded more than $80 million in grants, funding over 200 projects in 50 countries.
In addition, the philanthropist also serves on the board of several environmental protection organizations including the World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Pristine Seas and Oceans 5. He is also an advisor on The Solutions Project, an organization dedicated to scaling up the adoption of clean, renewable energy.
He also has a history of investing in Israeli eco-friendly projects, including a green hotel at the Herzliya marina, as well as promoting the development of – at the time – in January 2017, the world’s tallest solar thermal tower created by Megalim at the Ashalim solar complex in the Negev.
Aleph Farms has consistently made the news over the last several years as it attempts to disrupt the traditional meat market with its cultured, slaughter-free meat. It grows beef steaks, from non-genetically engineered cells isolated from a living cow, without harming animals and with a significantly reduced impact to the environment.
The company was co-founded in 2017 by Didier Toubia, The Kitchen Hub of the Strauss Group, and Professor Shulamit Levenberg from the Biomedical Engineering Faculty at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
In January, the company announced an agreement with Japanese multinational Mitsubishi Corporation’s Food Industry Group to bring cultivated meat to Japan, followed by a deal to operate in Brazil.
The Technion will partner with the Carasso family to renovate the FoodTech building and make it more advanced.
The Technion will be partnering with the Carasso Family and Carasso Motors in revamping the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering. The building that is currently known as the Food Industries Center will be renovated and turned into the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center and will be dedicated to promoting cutting-edge food technologies, teaching, research and development (R&D).
The renovations will expand and upgrade the building, making it unique to Israel, and one of the most advanced of its kind in the world. It will include an R&D center for industrial production, a packaging laboratory, an industrial kitchen, and tasting and evaluation units. There will also be a visitors area for high-school students to be exposed to the world of FoodTech and startups.
“Eradicating world hunger and improving food security are among the main challenges facing humanity in the 21st century, as defined by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “The Technion has the only faculty in Israel for research in food engineering, a faculty that leads the Israeli FoodTech industry.
“We are grateful to the Crasso Family for their generous contribution, which will establish the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center, and will help us promote groundbreaking scientific research in the field, train the next generation of the Israeli FoodTech industry and maintain the faculty’s position at the global forefront of research and development.
“In 1924, our grandfather Moshe immigrated with his family to Israel from Thessaloniki, where he was one of the leaders of the Jewish community,” said Yoel Carasso, chairman of Carasso Motors. In Israel, he cofounded Discount Bank, Ophir Cinema and of course, Carasso Motors. For me and for my uncle Shlomo and my cousins – Ioni, Orli, Tzipa and Arik – this is coming full circle from a century ago.
Yoel Carasso, Chairman of Carasso Motors (Left) and Prof. Marcelle Machluf, Dean of the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering (credit: RAMI SHLUSH / TECHNION)
“We chose to support the Carasso FoodTech Innovation center since the Technion is synonymous with excellence. The Technion is an engine for combining basic and applied science in the Galilee and in Israel as a whole. We believe the Carasso FoodTech Innovation Center will contribute to the industry and to collaborative work in this field, and thus strengthen the Israeli economy and society. Our family has a history of supporting the Technion, and when the opportunity to establish this center sprang, we knew it was our calling to lead.
“The faculty is one of the only ones in the world that combines the disciplines of bioengineering, technology, food sciences and life sciences,” said Prof. Marcelle Machluf, the faculty’s dean. “Coping with the COVID-19 pandemic has only emphasized the importance of food and biotechnology in maintaining our existence and meeting future existential challenges. To address the many challenges in this field, including access to healthy, affordable food and innovative medical treatments, we need advanced infrastructure that will enable the integration of new engineering and scientific tools; these will enable us to develop the necessary technologies, as well as the infrastructure and equipment that will support the development and assimilation of knowledge required to tackle tomorrow’s food challenges.”
“Carasso Motors, with its various brands – Renault, Nissan, Infinity and Dacia – is committed to innovation and connection with our diverse customer base in Israel,” said Isaac Weitz, CEO of Carasso Motors. “Food technology is an evolving field that brings value in many ways to our stockholders. Food research tackled environmental and global warming challenges, providing food security and a balanced diet, accelerating paramedical developments that combine medicine and food, and of course, contributing to the development of innovative solutions that will put Israel at the forefront of science globally.
“At Carasso Motors, we jumped at the opportunity to make such a significant contribution to the establishment of this advanced research center, which will also improve and advance Israel’s education and society.”
Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a new, low-cost, low-energy system for producing hydrogen from water.
Water electrolysis is an easy way of producing hydrogen gas. While hydrogen is considered a clean, renewable fuel, efficient electrolysis requires high electric potential, high pH and in most cases, catalysts based on ruthenium and other expensive metals.
As detailed in an article in The Journal of the American Chemical Society and reported on the university’s website, Technion researchers have developed a unique system for producing hydrogen from water using little energy and inexpensive materials. Led by Professor Galia Maayan, head of the Biomimetic Chemistry Laboratory at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, along with doctoral student Guilin Ruan, this is the fastest system of its kind reported to date that uses available copper catalysts.
Doctoral student Guilin Ruan (Technion Israel Institute of Technology via Twitter)
Maayan and Ruan designed and developed a system in which the catalyst is soluble in water. The system is based on three elements: copper ions; a peptide-like oligomer (small molecule) that binds the copper and maintains its stability; and a compound called borate whose function is to maintain the pH in a limited range.
The major innovation in this work is the researchers’ discovery that the borate compound helps stabilize the metallic center and helps catalyze it.
Maayan explained that the inspiration for the new system came from enzymes (biological catalysts) that use the protein’s peptide chain to stabilize the metallic center and by natural energetic processes such as photosynthesis, which are driven by units that use solar energy to transport electrons and protons.
The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program.
Israel’s leading tech institution, the Technion, has been rated the number one institute in leading European machine-learning research in a rating by CSRankings.
Israel’s leading tech institution, the Technion, has been rated the number one institute leading machine-learning research in Europe in a rating by CSRankings. The rating is based on data gathered between 2016 and 2021.
The Technion also placed 15th globally in artificial intelligence research and 11th in machine learning.
Some 46 people are researching AI at the Technion and over 100 are conducting research in the fields of industrial robotics, cybersecurity and smart vehicles. Some 42 of these researchers have done work that was published up to 30 times at computer science conferences, according to the rankings.
The Technion’s Machine Learning and Intelligent Systems research center has led groundbreaking research in AI both in Israel and worldwide, collaborating with other institutions involved in research in the field such as Carnegie Mellon University and American software company PTC, and connecting researchers with the industry.
The Computer Science Faculty building at Technion University in Haifa, Israel (credit: BENY SHLEVICH/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
“We are very proud of the recognition The Technion has received in its contribution to artificial intelligence – especially as it continues to make deep and personal connections with others in the field and a significant impact on what we can hope to expect from it in the future,” the Director of Technion UK, Alan Aziz, said.
The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa has attained global prestige for work in numerous scientific fields, including life sciences, biotechnology, stem-cell research, sustainable energy, water management, materials engineering and aerospace and information technology. Over 13,000 students currently attend the university.
Dr. Martin Ellis, Chairman of the Israel Society of Hematology and Transfusion Medicine, spoke to The Jerusalem Post about two newer treatments for the main types of blood cancer.
Although only around five out of every 100,000 people suffer from blood cancer, the disease is among the most serious and deadly.
An estimated 68,000 people die from blood cancer each year in the United States alone, according to the Leukemia Research Foundation. The statistics in Israel are unknown.
But new and innovative treatments are being explored, according to Dr. Martin Ellis, Chairman of the Israel Society of Hematology and Transfusion Medicine.
He spoke to The Jerusalem Post about two newer treatments for the main types of blood cancers, leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma, in recognition of Blood Cancer Awareness Month.
For starters, CAR-T cells are currently playing a key role in treating people with blood cancer.
“We remove the T-cells from the patient and send them to the lab, where they get engineered using genetic engineering technology to identify specific molecules on the surface of the patient’s cancer,” Ellis, who is also head of the Hematology Department at Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, explained. “These engineered CAR-T cells are re-infused into the body intravenously. Then, the modified cells seek and destroy the malignant cells in the body.”
A model of the protein (the blue ribbon) and the DNA (the spheres) is binds (credit: WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE)
He said the treatment is generally used on people with lymphoma and multiple myeloma, and specifically those who had prior treatments that did not work or had been in remission and the cancer came back.
“CAR-T can achieve a remission in the region of 60% to 70% of patients,” Ellis said. “And it appears that around 30% are actually cured. This is an unprecedented rate of success in the realm of cancer therapy.”
Doctors are already using the patient’s own immune system to attack his or her tumors, but on the horizon will be the use of CRISPR technology, which is “basically modifying as you would with an eraser and pencil the sequence of DNA in tumor cells and replacing the abnormal part of the DNA with normal DNA,” he explained.
So far, this has been done successfully in benign hematology, but not in malignant hematology. It is “trickier when it comes to cancer cells because the abnormalities are many and vary from cell to cell,” Ellis said. But he added that he expects doctors and scientists to get there soon.
Israel has been at the forefront of the next generation of blood cancer treatments. The CAR-T technology was first conceived and developed in the Weizmann Institute of Science by renowned immunologist Zelig Eshhar.
Moreover, Israeli Nobel Prize winning scientists Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko from the Technion discovered a pathway responsible for the degradation of proteins, which was crucial to the creation of proteasome inhibitors that slow the degradation of proteins and hence inhibit the progression of cancer. Specifically, one of the most successful drugs used to treat multiple myeloma, Bortezomib, is based on this discovery.
“When it comes to treating blood cancers, the Israeli contribution has been significant and, as usual, out of proportion to our population and size,” Ellis said.
