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Private and public institutions around the world are jostling to create new collaboration agreements with Israeli research bodies in an effort to mine the country’s scientific excellence and innovation.

Article by Abigail Klein Leichman, published on Israel21c on March 31, 2019.

From left at the opening ceremony for the Technion-Intel Center for Artificial Intelligence: Intel VP and GM of the Artificial Intelligence Products Group Naveen G. Rao, Technion VP for External Relations Prof. Boaz Golany, Intel CTO Michael Mayberry, Technion Executive VP for Research Prof. Wayne Kaplan, and Oren Gershon from Intel’s Artificial Intelligence Products Group. Photo by Shitzu Photographers/Technion Spokesperson’s Office

Research from Israel is driving awesome advances in medicine, healthcare, water management, autonomous vehicles, consumer products, manufacturing, and – well, you name it.

So it’s only natural that many international academic, corporate and government bodies are signing collaboration agreements with Israeli research universities and hospitals.

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Research from Israel is driving awesome advances in medicine, healthcare, water management, autonomous vehicles, consumer products, manufacturing, and – well, you name it.

So it’s only natural that many international academic, corporate and government bodies are signing collaboration agreements with Israeli research universities and hospitals.

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Nanotechnology is one of the hot fields of shared interest, for application in everything from cancer drug delivery to finding dark matter in outer space.

Israeli physicist Beena Kalisky from Bar-Ilan University’s Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA) is leading a team of researchers in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden in developing a desktop-sized quantum computer.

BINA recently inked research and cooperation deals with the United Nations International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in Portugal; the University of Jyväskylä in Finland; State Key Laboratory for Modification of Chemicals, Fibers & Polymer Materials at Donghua University in Shanghai, and Hanyang University in Seoul.

“Israel offers a combination of good research and good conditions for partners, and that attracts entities to us,” says BINA Director Prof. Dror Fixler, also a member of the Bar-Ilan Faculty of Engineering and a new fellow of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE).

“In order to get big grants for projects, researchers must gather a team of individuals and labs from different places around the globe,” Fixler tells ISRAEL21c.

Bilateral agreements signed by the Israeli government with many countries in Europe and Asia over the last 10 years ease the way for researchers in these countries to find partners in Israel when they need collaborators, he explains.

It is internationally acknowledged that there’s vast innovation to be mined from Israeli research institutions, says Dr. Rafael Beyar, director of Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa.

The Georgia Institute of Technology’s Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI) recently chose Rambam as its partner for a new Biomedical and Digital Health Innovation Center in Atlanta to help Israeli med-tech startups get their products on the US healthcare market.

“Being on the forefront of medical practice on one hand, with tight links to the academic world on the other, and enhanced by the entrepreneurial culture around us, creates many innovations within Israel,” Beyar tells ISRAEL21c.

“This is why collaborations with, for example, Atlanta, are so important. [The idea is] to try and generate an easy path to regulatory approval and clinical adoption of leading new innovations that stem from Israel,” says Beyar, who is also a professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

GCMI CEO Tiffany Wilson said Rambam was picked because “Israeli engineering and entrepreneurial expertise regularly translate to medical devices capable of improving patient outcomes while driving the overall cost of care down in many parts of the world, including the United States.”

Global healthcare also stands to benefit from joint research projects in the Technion and Intel Corporation’s newly inaugurated Center for Artificial Intelligence.

In addition, the center will apply Technion innovations to the task of making better autonomous vehicles, smart environments, and home and industrial robots using natural language processing, deep learning and hardware optimization for learning algorithms.

“The Technion is the leading university in Israel in the field of artificial intelligence and is one of the top 10 universities in the world in the field,” said Center for Artificial Intelligence Director Prof. Shie Mannor from the Technion’s Faculty of Electrical Engineering.

The Technion and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot have collaborated on nearly 50 research projects since 2011 with the University of Michigan as part of the Michigan-Israel Partnership for Research and Education program.

The latest projects in this collaboration, funded by $20 million from the D. Dan and Betty Kahn Foundation, are focused on building autonomous robots to assist humans with difficult, repetitive or dangerous jobs; and tools to enhance privacy and accuracy in big-data analytics for precision health.

“In this day and age, international and interdisciplinary collaborations are vital to the future of science and engineering,” said Prof. Boaz Golany from the Technion, adding that the research “will benefit people not only in the US and Israel, but worldwide.”

In 2018, the Technion was invited to join EuroTech Universities, a group of research-based universities working to translate basic research into societal solutions.

The other consortium members are the Technical University of Denmark, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, École Polytechnique, TechniEindhoven University of Technology and Technical University of Munich.

“Technion is a perfect match to join and boost this joint endeavor, given its scientific excellence and vibrant innovation ecosystem,” said Jan Mengelers, president of the EuroTech Universities Alliance, established in 2011. “We are pooling our complementary research strengths and connecting our innovation ecosystems for more impact.”

“We bring the ‘Technion way’ of doing things to this partnership: reaching our goals faster and with fewer resources,” Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said.

“The combination with the great strengths of the other members of the alliance, which comprises an elite group of European universities similar to Technion, will help us ensure we are at the forefront of scientific research, benefiting millions worldwide.”

Water, air and healthcare

Many international bodies are thirsty for Israeli expertise in water and health expertise. The past year alone saw significant international activity in these sectors.

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research agreed to a five-year R&D partnership with the Water Institute of the Gulf in Baton Rouge, Louisiana – America’s first international water research center — for joint projects to improve groundwater, farming, drinking water aquifer utilization, surface water and streams.

Justin R. Ehrenwerth, president and CEO of the Water Institute of the Gulf, said, “Our future generations depend on finding and developing the best possible science. And BGU has done a lot of that. You’ve made the desert bloom. You’ve taught the world that water challenges can be solved.”

On March 31, the joint German-Israeli aeroHEALTH Helmholtz International Lab opened on the Rehovot campus of the Weizmann Institute of Science to research the effects of atmospheric aerosols on human health. The lab was developed by scientists from Weizmann, Helmholtz Zentrum München, and Forschungszentrum and is to run initially for five years.

Biomedicine, neuroscience and environmental sciences are the focus of the new Joint Translational Science and Technology Research Institute recently launched in Shanghai’s Zizhu International Education Park in cooperation with the University of Haifa and East China Normal University.

“We believe that our cooperation with ECNU will lead to groundbreaking studies in applied science, biostatistics, brain research, behavioral research and more,” said Prof. Ron Robin, president of the University of Haifa.

The Regional Alcohol and Drug Abuse Research (RADAR) Center of Ben-Gurion University — recognized by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse for its “contributions to scientific diplomacy through outstanding efforts in international collaborative research” – recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Colorado – Anschutz Medical Campus to promote substance-use research, education, training and exchange.

RADAR works with international governmental agencies including the US Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration, US Agency for International Development (USAID), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Initiative, and universities worldwide.

RADAR is starting collaborations with the University of Malta, Chiang Mai University, and universities in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Vladivostok to study attitudes, beliefs and knowledge among medical and allied healthcare students regarding medical cannabis.

The Weizmann Institute of Science and Institut Curie in Paris recently signed an historic partnership to work closely together to improve knowledge in the life sciences, particularly in physics, chemistry and cancer research.

Innovation and entrepreneurship

Israel is, of course, famous for its startup smarts, and some recent academic partnerships leverage that expertise.

IBM’s Alpha Zone partnered with Hadassah University Medical Center of Jerusalem to establish an accelerator for post-seed Israeli startups developing deep-tech solutions and services in digital medicine.

Tel Aviv University was chosen as the only foreign founding partner of a new innovation and entrepreneurship hub in Chicago focusing on research, education and startup creation in the fields of cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, big data and food security.

Tel Aviv University and Yissum, the tech-transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, are partners with the University of Illinois, University of Chicago and Northwestern University in the new $500 million Discovery Partners Institute, supported by the State of Illinois and the city of Chicago.

Discovery Partners Institute will facilitate academic and industry collaboration, with the initial focus on entrepreneurship, biosciences, computer science including AI, big data and cybersecurity, as well as food and agricultural technologies.

Yissum also is opening centers of international cooperation in Asunción (Paraguay) and Shenzhen (China) to facilitate regional commercialization of early-stage technologies coming out of the university’s research labs. Yissum CEO and President Yaron Daniely said additional international centers of cooperation are in the pipeline.

Nanosynex is an Israeli startup working on a novel approach to help physicians prescribe the correct antibiotic for each case.

Article by Brian Blum, published on Israel21c on April 3, 2019.

The rise of so-called “superbugs” is reaching epidemic levels. Today, nearly 700,000 people around the world die not from the illness for which they went to the doctor or a hospital but from an infection resulting from contact with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

In the United States alone, 2 million patients contract infections from superbugs; 23,000 people die from those infections. Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill estimates that by the year 2050, more people will die from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections than from cancer.

One of the ways superbugs develop is when a patient is prescribed the wrong antibiotics. The bacteria “learn” from that incorrect treatment and can share their newfound resistance with other bacteria.

“The body becomes an incubator for resistant bacteria,” explains Diane Abensur Bessin, CEO of Nanosynex, an Israeli startup working on a novel approach to help physicians avoid mis-prescribing antibiotics.

“If we give a patient the correct treatment at the right dose, then no resistance will be created, the patient will be cured faster, and other patients won’t be infected by resistant bacteria,” Abensur Bessin tells ISRAEL21c.

Nanosynex’s solution is a diagnostic test that determines which bacteria in a patient’s body are resistant to which antibiotics – all in just four hours. That compares favorably with the day or two or more required for traditional diagnostic tests. The result: physicians can more quickly prescribe the antibiotics that will work.

This will entail some change in behavior among doctors, who tend to prescribe a broad-based treatment rather than taking blood or urine and waiting for results. It’s not that physicians are in cahoots with the bad bacteria; their patients come in suffering and doctors want to provide fast relief.

“But every minute counts when you’re dealing with resistant bacteria,” Abensur Bessin tells ISRAEL21c. If you don’t get your test results back for a couple of days, it may already be too late to stop resistance from developing.

Antibiotic overprescribing is a particular problem in primary care, where it’s viruses – not bacteria – that cause most infections. About 90 percent of all antibiotic prescriptions in the US are issued by general practitioners.

Nanosynex is creating a kit that will be sold to laboratories; it contains disposable cards, a fluorescent reading device and software to do the analysis.

The technology is based on “microfluidic” features, requiring a smaller quantity of bacteria than other testing technologies, Abensur Bessin explains. The sample is mixed with a fluorescent dye; the intensity of the fluorescent signal is proportional to any bacterial growth.

Abensur Bessin came up with the idea for Nanosynex along with her co-founder, Brazilian native Michelle Heyman, while both were studying for their MBAs at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The two approached the university’s technology transfer office and asked which researchers had technologies that were mature enough to be turned into a company.

“We met with five different professors,” Abensur Bessin tells ISRAEL21c. “We wanted something that had a short time-to-market – five years or less.”

That’s how the two were introduced to Prof. Shulamit Levenberg, dean of the Technion’s biomedical-engineering faculty. Levenberg and her team had already been working for several years on the microfluidic “chip” that would become the basis of the Nanosynex kit.

Paris-born Abensur Bessin was particularly interested in identifying a medical technology to build a company around. Her father has a firm in France that distributes diagnostic tools across Europe. With the marketing channels already in place, Levenberg’s invention was a match.

“We knew there was a huge potential,” Abensur Bessin says. “There was no debate on the need to create this.”

Nanosynex incorporated in 2017 and has raised $1 million with another $500,000 pledged from the Israel Innovation Authority. The five-person company is operating out of the Technion’s in-house accelerator but will be moving to its own offices soon.

In 2018, Nanosynex was one of 10 companies accepted into IBM’s Tel Aviv-based accelerator for healthcare startups. The company receives blood for testing from Rambam Healthcare Campus in Haifa and Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. The head of Rambam’s microbiology department is on Nanosynex’s scientific advisory board.

Abensur Bessin says when Nanosynex results were compared with those from existing diagnostic devices, “they were exactly the same but done in half the time.”

Slowing the rise of the superbugs is just the start of what Abensur Bessin hopes will be a “long-lasting business that will grow internationally.”

In the meantime, if your doctor tells you to wait a few hours before he or she prescribes an antibiotic, don’t become too anxious: it will be for the good of your health — and the wellbeing of the entire planet.

Nanosynex’s microfluidic array. Photo: courtesy

Innoviz Technologies, an Israel-based start-up developing solid-state lidar sensors and perception software for autonomous vehicles, has raised $132 million in a Series C funding round. The round makes the company one of the better capitalized lidar startups, and Innoviz has already locked in key customers including BMW. Co-founder and Chief Business Officer Oren Rosenzweig and COO Ronnen Lovinger are #Technion alumni.

Article by Kirsten Korosec, published on TechCrunch on March 25, 2019.

Innoviz, the Israel-based startup developing solid-state lidar sensors and perception software for autonomous vehicles, has raised $132 million in a Series C funding round that includes major Chinese financial institutions.

The round, which makes Innoviz one of the better capitalized lidar startups, includes China Merchants Capital (SINO-BLR Industrial Investment Fund, L.P.), Shenzhen Capital Group and New Alliance Capital. Israeli institutional investors Harel Insurance Investments and Financial Services and Phoenix Insurance Company also participated.

The Series C round will remain open for a second closing to be announced in the coming months, the company said.

Lidar measures distance using laser light to generate highly accurate 3D maps of the world around the car. It’s considered by most in the self-driving car industry a key piece of technology required to safely deploy robotaxis and other autonomous vehicles. Innoviz is developing solid-state lidar, which proponents of this technology say is more reliable over time because of the lack of moving parts.

Like so many startups with fresh capital, Innoviz plans to use the funds to scale up the company.

For Innoviz, this means increasing production of its lidar sensors and expanding its manufacturing capacity. Innoviz is focused on expanding in important automotive markets, including the U.S., Europe, Japan and China. Innoviz has been pushing into China over the past year through a partnership with the Chinese automotive supplier HiRain Technologies, a global supplier to some of China’s largest automakers.

That company has half of its business coming from China and has won nine of its supplier agreements with different automakers in the country through its HiRain partnership, according to people with knowledge of the company.

The company’s aim is to enable high-volume delivery of its automotive-grade lidar system called InnovizOne. This product can be produced and sold at a 90 percent lower cost than its first-generation system, according to Innoviz.

Innoviz said it also plans to expand its research and development efforts by investing in the buildout of next-generation products and software that will feature more cost reductions and improved performance.

Innoviz’s strategy has been to partner with a number of OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers such as Magna, HARMAN, HiRain Technologies and Aptiv and to package perception software with its lidar sensors and offer it as a complete unit for companies developing autonomous vehicle technology.

Innoviz has locked in several key customers, notably BMW. The automaker picked Innoviz’s tech for series production of autonomous vehicles starting in 2021.

In March, Lyft announced a partnership with Magna to help get its self-driving tech into various automakers, as well as implement the ride-hailing service into future autonomous cars. Innoviz raised $65 million in Series B funding in 2017, from strategic partners and leading auto industry suppliers Delphi Automotive and Magna International, along with other investors.

Danny Yaakobson is the world’s first patient to receive a lab-grown bone implant, made from his own fat cells to replace a missing section of his shinbone. Just one year after the surgery, Danny competed in the Israman – ישראמן Triathlon. No, this is not science fiction: The innovative transplantation technique was developed by Bonus BioGroup, whose CEO, Shai Meretzki, is a #Technion alumnus and former instructor in the Technion Faculty of Medicine.

Article by Diana Rabba, published on NoCamels on February 20, 2019.

When Danny Yaakobson, an extreme sports enthusiast, suffered a serious leg injury following a car accident two years ago, he did not imagine he would become the world’s first patient to receive a lab-grown bone implant made from his own fat cells to replace a missing section of his shinbone, let alone take part in an Israman triathlon just a year following the surgery.

But that is exactly what happened. While traveling abroad in 2017, Yaakobson suffered a road accident and nearly lost his whole leg. The injury was serious and painful, he says, but his doctor told him about a clinical trial that would change the course of his life.

The now 41-year-old agreed to the trial of a revolutionary technology called BonoFill, a novel tissue-engineered bone graft, composed of the patient’s own cells, developed by Israeli biotechnology company Bonus BioGroup.

Bonus BioGroup CEO Dr. Shai Meretzki, right. Courtesy of Bonus BioGroup

“The doctor said that there wasn’t much to lose anyway [in participating in the clinical trial], that the situation was not so good as it was,” Yaakobson explains in a video interview provided by Bonus BioGroup.

During the process, human fat tissue is extracted from the patient. Bonus BioGroup then separates the various types of cells and isolates the stem cells. The stem cells are removed and stimulated in a bioreactor, a special device that simulates the body’s environment and provides suitable conditions for bone generation. The fat cells are then grown in a lab until the tissue becomes solid, after which the hardened bone tissue is injected back into the patient’s body.

Bonus BioGroup CEO Dr. Shai Meretzki says in a video interview that “currently an autologous [cells or tissues obtained from the same individual] transplant is the gold standard for treating patients who lose bones for a wide variety of reasons. In order to perform the process you need to harvest the bone for one location within the body. Usually you cut from the femur and move it to the cut location, which is a very hard, expensive, painful and difficult process.”

“What we are offering instead is a completely new approach to patients who have lost their bones for the most disparate reasons, growing the old bone outside of the human body within a relatively short time,” Meretzki says.

The surgery to replace a missing 2 inches (5 centimeters) of Yaakobson’s tibia was performed last year at Afula’s Emek Medical Center led by Dr. Nimrod Rozen, Head of Orthopedics. In just three months following the procedure, Yaakobson was able to walk more comfortably and even jump.

Three weeks ago, Yaakobson completed the 112-mile (180.25 km) bicycle ride that is part of the Israman 2019 competition in Eilat which includes a full Ironman [2.4-mile (3.86 km) swim, bike ride, and a marathon 26.22-mile (42.20 km) run], a half Ironman (half the full Ironman distances) as well as a relay.

Yaakobson says he felt “incredible” after completing the ride, adding that it was “no doubt a miracle that a year following such a serious injury, I would be able to come back and participate in such a difficult race.”

Dr. Rozen says the technology was “a game-changer in the orthopedic surgery,” one that “in a few years this will be the preferred method of dealing with those gaps in the bone.”

“For the first time in history we can grow an organ outside the human body. We are able to implant the bone into the gap or better yet actually fixing the bone itself, first creating the gap and then putting inside it the tissue that we are extracting from the human cell,” he added.

Meretzki tells NoCamels the benefits are clear. “The bone graft is an alive, vital and autologous one, which is created from the cells of the patient; you do not have any danger of side effects. In addition, our material is created within a clean facility with no danger of contamination and with a very high safety profile.”

“Our raw material consists of a small sample of fat issue, which is harvested by physicians and then implanted. The process is very simple and fast and minimally invasive,” he explains.

“Millions of people suffer from bone loss. We offer for the first time the ability to take a small sample of cells from the body and grow a new one in the lab identical to the original one, one that mimics the physiological environment and that is created from the patient’s own cells,” Meretzki adds.

Currently, BonoFill is in phase I/II clinical trials for maxillofacial and orthopedic indications.

In March, the company announced successful interim results of a study aimed at filling bone voids in patients’ limbs.

The trials demonstrated that, for the first time, two patients experienced forearm healing, while another patient experienced thigh healing, within just two months of implanting the injectable live bone graft, Bonus BioGroup said.

Meretzki tells NoCamels the company intends to develop products for other tissues such as cartilage and adipocytes (fat), which “have great potential both in medical needs and for cosmetic application, with a multi-billion-dollar market size.”

“We believe that the development of laboratory-grown transplantable cartilage and fat tissue will provide novel treatment possibilities for illnesses with currently less-than-optimal treatment solutions, much like BonoFill for the treatment of large segmental bone defects,” he says.

In September 2018, Bonus BioGroup raised $5 million in a private placement of shares in the company.

Danny Yaakobson at the Eilat Israman competition, January 2019. Photo by Shvoong photografers

Nanit Plus is a smart baby monitor that uses machine learning algorithms and advanced computer vision technology to provide data about sleep patterns and more. It’s also HIPAA-compliant, so the data is protected. Co-founder Assaf Glazer is a #Technion alum, and Nanit is a Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute Runway Startup Postdoc Program alumni company.

Article by Fatherly, published on Fatherly.com on February 05, 2019.

The best baby monitor is the one that works best for you. Some parents prefer the low-tech sensibility of an audio-only unit; others prefer one with video so they can keep a better eye on their baby. Now, as technology improves, there’s a third option: Baby monitors that not only see and hear but also offer a more detailed look at a child’s sleep patterns. This emerging trend is available in a number of monitors but we think the Nanit Plus is best in class. It’s a beautifully designed baby monitor that provides a clear, bird’s eye view of a child in-crib. More so, it has a deep array of sleep-tracking tech that logs enough data to put even the most neurotic of new parents’ minds to ease.

The Nanit Plus, a follow up to the original Nanit, is a small, square camera that’s made to be placed above a crib, aiming directly down for an overhead view. It’s well designed and unobtrusive, mounting as simply as a shelf. It’s equipped with a wide-angle lens that streams 1280×960 resolution to your phone or tablet 24/7. It also boasts two-way audio, a soft-glow nightlight, sound- and motion-detectors, and, thanks to an array of infrared LEDs, crisp, clean night vision. Nice touch: even when the Internet is down, the Nanit continues to stream over Wi-Fi. All of these features allow for a perfectly framed view of a baby in their crib.

And the Nanit Plus takes advantage of that. Using machine learning, the camera keeps a watchful eye of not only the baby itself, but also his or her sleep patterns. It notes whenever the baby is awake or asleep, how long it takes them to fall asleep, and how many times someone goes in to check on them.

How does it know all this? Nanit Plus uses “computer vision technology” which basically means that it has a number of sensors and processors that detect movement in the crib. Using this gathered information, Nanit’s creators say the “camera can process, analyze and actually understand images of your baby.”

The Nanit Plus automatically pushes all of this data, keeping a running log so that parents don’t have to groggily scribble down every midnight feeding or fussy session. It’s also smart enough to crunch all of the data and suggest different practices for helping the little bundle of joy sleep better, from making the room darker to telling parents to stop picking them up so soon.

Now, it’s easy to be wary of a smart Wi-Fi baby monitor, especially one that continuously logs data and pushes that data to the cloud. And while no unit is 100 percent safe from hackers, the folks at Nanit have taken some very nice measures to prevent any issues. The system features a 256-bit encryption is rated HIPAA-compliant, meaning that it has all proper measures in place to protect all the data it collects.

That data, by the way, sits in an easy-to-use app that’s also very well designed. Testers noted how nice it was to pop open the screen and be able to get crib notes on, well, their baby’s crib notes (the app tracks sleep efficiency, time asleep, visits, how long it took the baby to fall asleep) instead of deciphering their own late night scribblings. The app also allows parents, once multiple weeks of data have been logged, to look at longer trends in activity too. Testers also dug the silly happy and sad faces that accompany each log and indicate if the night was a success or not. All testers also surmised that the camera was a godsend for any parent dealing with baby sleep issues and wanting an in-depth readout. “It’s a game changer,” summed up one, succinctly.

Now, the Nanit Plus offers a lot but also costs a lot, too. The camera itself retails for $279. Then, there’s the Nanit Insights program which provides more in-depth data. This is optional, but is really the portal into the monitor’s robust sleep functions. Free for the first 30 days, it then costs $100 per year for in-depth sleep analysis, personalized tips, and such features as its ability to create short video recaps of the baby’s entire night.

While a few parents grumbled at the price, most testers said they would consider paying that rate for the peace of mind the Nanit Plus provides. “It was like I had a night nurse,” said one tester. “No, they didn’t feed and change my baby but each morning I had a log of what happened and, after a few weeks, ‘insights’ that made more aware of the little things I can do to help them — and me — sleep better.” We’d recommend would too. If you’re willing to take the leap into high-tech monitoring, it’s a revolutionary piece of parenting technology.

I spoke with Alexey Tomsov, Technion graduate in Biotechnology and Food engineering (MSc, BSc), about Jet-Eat Printed Foods Ltd., a Tel Aviv start-up which ‘prints’ steaks using 3D printers. In this interview, Alexey Tomsov, who is a senior manager at Israeli startup Jet-Eat, speaks about disrupting the vegan food market with 3D printing technology that will be able to produce tasty meat substitutes using plant-based formulations. Alexey is a #Technion graduate.

Article by Shlomo Maital, published on The Jerusalem Post on February 22, 2019.

In researching this column, I was astonished to learn how carnivorous we Israelis are.

According to an OECD study on per capita meat consumption, Israel ranks fourth in the world. Israelis consume on average 86.1 kilograms (189 pounds) of meat annually – more than the average body weight! This is only slightly less than Australia, the world’s top carnivore. And the Australians raise their own beef. We have to import it.

To feed our craving for meat, in 2018 Israeli companies imported for slaughter nearly 700,000 live sheep and cattle, mostly from Australia, a steep rise of 37% from the previous year. Animal rights groups claim that these animals undergo “a tortuous voyage to Israel in crowded ships, wallowing in their own excrement, sick and exhausted.” Does anyone believe the animals are given proper food and water during their three-week-long 12,000 km (7,600 mile) voyage?

The slaughter of animals worldwide is truly massive. Nearly 1.5 billion pigs are slaughtered yearly, some 600 million sheep, over 400 million goats and 300 million steers. All this, to produce over 300 million tons of meat yearly, three times more than in 1970. As the world grows wealthier, it consumes more and more meat.

Do we human beings have the moral right to impose cruelty on living beings just to feed our cravings? Mostly, when we savor a sizzling steak, we turn a blind eye to the pain and suffering that generated it, because we never see it – it is kept well-hidden.

Last July a bill was introduced to the Knesset, calling for a phasing out of live animal imports. The cabinet approved it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife Sarah supported the bill strongly. But it failed to pass the Knesset. Another win for the lobbyists.

The ethical and humane appeals of animal rights advocates join a hard economic reality – we simply cannot sustain the enormous waste that eating meat implies, even if we ignore the cruelty. To feed billions of people, we will need to eat vegetable calories rather than wastefully feed them to animals. Here are the numbers.

It takes about 25 times more energy to produce one calorie of beef than to produce one calorie of corn for human consumption. A large proportion of beef cattle in the US are corn fed. If we ate the corn, we could feed 25 times more people.

According to Science magazine, to raise a steer weighing 700 kg, it takes five million liters of water and 8,000 kg of food. That steer generates 10 times its weight, or 7,000 kg, in carbon dioxide emissions, through methane flatulence. Methane is said to cause fully one-fourth of global warming. For all this, we get just 320 kg of meat. Now, multiply those numbers by 300 million, the number of steers raised and slaughtered annually. In short, we waste 96% of food calories, and worsen climate change, besides causing immense cruelty and suffering.

It is doubtful the world will become vegan overnight – even though India, for instance, consumes only 3 kg of meat per person yearly, for religious reasons, and still thrives. The only solution seems to be to make tasty synthetic meat.

There is a wide variety of people who reduce their meat consumption or avoid it altogether. Vegetarians eat no meat of any kind. “Flexitarians” eat meat occasionally. Pollotarians eat chicken or other poultry, but no meat. Pescatarians eat fish but not poultry or meat. Vegans abstain from using any animal products, particularly food. One study showed one adult Canadian in every ten is flexitarian, and 42% of those are baby boomers.

I spoke with Alexey Tomsov, Technion graduate in Biotechnology and Food engineering (MSc, BSc), about Jet-Eat Printed Foods Ltd., a Tel Aviv start-up founded early last year by Eshchar Ben-Shitrit; Tomsov is a senior manager at Jet-Eat, which ‘prints’ steaks using 3D printers.

How did the idea originate?
Eshchar, the founder of the company, was a devout, almost obsessive meat-eater for 30 years. A sudden change happened when he became a father, realizing that eating meat is wrong for the future of our planet, and the way we treat animals in our food system has to change. Unfortunately, existing meat substitutes fail to compete with meat, and much of that comes from the technology used to produce them. The discussion about 3D printing as a potential new technology for meat alternatives has been around for close to a decade, but never as a full-blown technological project. With a background in digital and 3D printing, Eshchar decided that his life mission is to make meat printing reality.

Alexey, the crucial test for Jet-Eat will be: does it taste good, like real steak, or close to it? Have you done taste tests? What did the carnivores say?
Taste is the No. 1priority for us from day one. People will eat the product, not the technology that is used to produce it, hence it needs to be tasty. This is why taste-tests are a crucial part of our R&D process already today. “Taste” is a very broad term, comprising many factors. We are constantly evaluating taste, flavor, mouthfeel, flavor delivery and much more. Moreover, we are working on novel incorporation of advanced flavors and flavor delivery mechanisms, which make our current products surprisingly beefy – and much more meat-like compared to existing meat alternatives. Combined with culinary experiments, we believe that these approaches will bring us as close as possible to the experience of meat.

What is the source of protein for Jet-Eat printed steaks? Does it match the protein of meat? Is it easier to digest than meat?
We have a unique and proprietary protein formulation from several plant sources. We try to optimize the selection of proteins for their functionality – mostly based on their contribution to the texture of the final product. However, we keep in mind the need to have a balanced source of amino acids and try to match beef in that sense as much as possible. We are incorporating protein sources with high DIAAS (Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Scores) in our formulations – in order to increase the amino acid absorption as compared to some of the plant-based meat alternatives currently available on the market. In addition, diets that are rich in plant-based proteins are linked in research to many health benefits.

Proteins are also important for different sensory attributes. For example, proteins are important for the mouthfeel and texture of meat and the plant-based alternatives. Our technology is developed from the ground up, tailored for the application – in order to reach these attributes in our products, bringing us one step closer to beef.

Have you considered various “pivots” (shifts in direction) for Jet-Eat?
The basic technology we are developing can deliver innovation in many fields related to food. However, our mission is focused on replacing meat, and this is what gets us excited every day. In meat, we have plans to use our technology to create many different products, starting from beef but not stopping with just one animal.

Can you describe your team? Your current funding status? Your plans for the next year or two?
We have a unique combination for a food technology company. We are a truly multidisciplinary team combining food technology, printing technology, and culinary background. There are not a lot of companies around the world in which a food engineer, mechanical engineer, and a chef are working together to create something tasty. We also have advisers with vast industry experience in food and especially plant-based meat. We have raised a pre-seed round and received support from the Israeli government and the European Institute of Technology. In 2019 we plan to triple our team size, and this will happen as part of a seed round [of funding] we are currently working on.

I FELT guilt pangs in writing this column. Can one write about animal cruelty and still savor a sizzling steak? My wife and I are basically flexitarians, consuming beef fairly rarely. But that juicy sizzling steak is still very tempting.

It will be interesting to see how the combination of moral values, healthy living trends and economics combine in future to change what 50,000 years of carnivorism have built into our brains and taste buds. Jet-Eat’s 3D steaks will surely help move this process forward.

A Jet-Eat printed steak. (photo credit: Courtesy)

An innovative centre for the printing of cells, tissues, and organs have been established in the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering led by Professor Shulamit Levenberg at the Technion.

Article by Kevin Hattori, published on American Technion Society on March 28, 2019.

Professor Shulamit Levenberg, who heads the centre, said at the event that “the new centre is open to all Technion researchers and will guide the Technion’s tissue engineering department into new areas.” Prof. Levenberg is dean of the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, and the Stanley and Sylvia Shirvan Chair in Cancer and Life Sciences.

The field of tissue engineering has undergone dizzying progress in recent decades – and the Technion has filled a significant role in this revolution. Technion researchers are developing complex and precise artificial tissues that significantly improve their integration in the target organ. This involves, among other things, the creation of tissue containing a developed system of blood vessels that quickly connect to the patient’s blood vessels.

Click here for a video of the 3D printer at work.

The 3-D Bio-Printing Center for Cell and Biomaterials Printing will provide a significant boost to tissue engineering at the Technion. The centre operates an innovative printer that prints three-dimensional scaffolds and the cells that grow into tissue. The printer translates the information obtained from the patient’s CT scans into three-dimensional tissue suited to the injury area. The system has additional tools to design scaffolds or cells to make 3D tissues, Levenberg said. “You can design as you wish and seed cells in the proper orientation to allow them to better organize into the right tissue structure.”

The printer is relevant to all areas of regenerative medicine and makes possible the printing of various tissues and the integration of controlled-release systems. It has several different printing heads, enabling the simultaneous creation of printed tissue from different. It is equipped with precise motors of variable speed and accuracy of 0.001 mm, as well as a built-in camera that improves the exactitude of the printing needle.

The system is suitable for a wide range of raw materials, such as hydrogels, thermoplastic materials, and ointments, with precise temperature and radiation control (ranging from 0 to 70 degrees Celsius and 30 to 250 degrees Celsius for ultraviolet radiation). The printing can be carried out directly into the growth plate.

For more than a century, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has pioneered in science and technology education and delivered world-changing impact. Proudly a global university, the Technion has long leveraged boundary-crossing collaborations to advance breakthrough research and technologies. Now with a presence in three countries, the Technion will prepare the next generation of global innovators. Technion people, ideas, and inventions make immeasurable contributions to the world, innovating in fields from cancer research and sustainable energy to quantum computing and computer science to do good around the world.

The American Technion Society supports visionary education and world-changing impact through the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Based in New York City, we represent thousands of US donors, alumni and stakeholders who invest in the Technion’s growth and innovation to advance critical research and technologies that serve the State of Israel and the global good. Over more than 75 years, our nationwide supporter network has funded new Technion scholarships, research, labs, and facilities that have helped deliver world-changing contributions and extend Technion education to campuses in three countries.

Breakthrough in Regenerating Damaged Tissues. Technion and Intel Inaugurate Centre for Artificial Intelligence. Technion PhD Student Wins Google Fellowship and more…

Read here for the latest from the Technion.

A breathalyzer designed to detect multiple cancers early is being tested in the UK.

Several illnesses are known to create signature smells from the body, including typhoid fever reported to smell like baked bread and the aroma of acetone, said to be similar to rotten apples, on the breath of diabetics. Recent research has also shown that a person’s breath could also indicate the presence of cancer.

To test this theory, Cancer Research UK have launched a two-year trial into a clinical device, called the Breath Biopsy, to find out if exhaled airborne molecules can be useful for cancer detection.

In the body’s normal metabolic processes, molecules called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are produced. It’s thought that cancer can create a different pattern of VOCs, which researchers hope to identify using the device. “Our goal is, can we spot these subtle differences?,” Billy Boyle, co-founder and CEO at Owlstone Medical which developed the device, told CNN.

The trial, which is being run by the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, is recruiting up to  1,500 participants, including healthy people to act as a control group.

Patients with stomach and esophageal cancers will initially be asked to try the test, before expanding to patients with prostate, kidney, bladder, liver and pancreatic cancers.

Participants will be asked to breathe into the device for 10 minutes to provide a sample, which will be analyzed by Owlstone Medical’s laboratory in Cambridge.

The idea is to identify if cancer signals are similar or different and how early any signals could be picked up. If some people go on to develop cancer, their samples will be compared to those who don’t develop the disease.

Late diagnosis

“We urgently need to develop new tools, like this breath test, which could help to detect and diagnose cancer earlier, giving patients the best chance of surviving their disease,” Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald, lead trial investigator at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, said in a statement.

Almost half of cancers are diagnosed at a late stage in England, according to Cancer Research UK. Some of the reasons are due to patients’ fears of invasive tests, a lack of knowledge of cancer signs and symptoms, and the lack of early detection tests for certain cancers.

Early detection can be a matter of life and death added Boyle, who added that around 85% of people with lung cancer are diagnosed at a late stage, “and they will die in one or two years [because] by the time doctors diagnose it, it is too late.”There are more than 360,000 new cancer cases in the UK every year, according to Cancer Research UK. Globally, an estimated 18.1 million new cases of cancer were reported in 2018, according to the World Health Organization.

The need for trials

In 2017, researchers told CNN they had developed a device which — using nanorays to analyze breath — can identify Parkinson’s disease, various cancers, kidney failure, multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease with 86% accuracy.

But the experimental technology analyzing breath had a number of issues it had to address: including the problem of storing breath that is not immediately analyzed.

Boyle agreed that it is hard to “capture, store, and transport” breath, but added that the Breath Biopsy device has been developed to solve those issues. He said the device captures chemicals using a cartridge, which “acts like a sponge,” and it is then transported to a lab where it is analyzed.

If the trial turns into a success, both Boyle and Cancer Research hope the breath biopsies will be used in doctors’ practices to figure out whether patients should be referred for further diagnostic tests.

“Through this clinical trial we hope to find signatures in breath needed to detect cancers earlier — it’s the crucial next step in developing this technology,” Fitzgerald said in a statement.

Today’s widespread interest in breath analysis stems from the relatively recent discovery — within the past 20 years or so — that nitric oxide, a common pollutant, works as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, Terence Risby, professor emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, told CNN in 2017. The three scientists who made the discovery won a Nobel Prize for their efforts in 1998.

The theory behind the technology is that each of us has a unique chemical “fingerprint.” Each disease also has a particular chemical signature, which can be detected on our breath.

CNN’s Susan Scutti contributed to this report.

Article published on CNN, January 3, 2019