Israel develops revolutionary medical marijuana inhaler

Posted  by Eliyokim Cohen

A first-in-class pocket-sized metered-dose cannabis inhaler helps patients and doctors control, monitor and fine-tune dosages

As medical marijuana debates heat up across the globe, a government-backed Israeli startup has developed the first device of its kind to administer cannabis as a pharmaceutical.

Unlike the current methods — smoking joints, imbibing oil, rubbing in a salve or eating laced brownies — this medical device enables the patient to inhale metered doses of vaporized cannabis granules.

The Syqe Inhaler is the brainchild of Perry Davidson, an entrepreneur who was instrumental in launching the Israeli Health Ministry’s Medical Cannabis Program in 2007, for the treatment of chronic nausea, pain and other conditions. Some 20,000 Israelis today take doctor-prescribed cannabis, and Israel is at the forefront of research and development in this field.

Pilot testing of the inhaler will start in hospitals around the country by the end of 2014. A home version of the device is expected to go on the market sometime in 2015.

Davidson formed Syqe Medical – a homophone of the word “psyche” — to tackle some of the problems surrounding the use of this controlled substance as a mainstream drug. He sought a scientific way to separate marijuana’s stigma as an illicit recreational drug from its proven health benefits.

“As early as the 1990s, cannabis has been shown to alleviate the symptoms of cancer treatments on young children,” Davidson told ISRAEL21c at the company’s offices in Jaffa, home to a 20-strong staff of physicians, pharmacologists, chemists, biologists and engineers. “But it was discontinued, due to the negative associations it elicited. And this is a shame that I thought needed to be rectified.”

Just the right amount

One of the problems with administering cannabis, he explained, is that “physicians have been unable to control, monitor or fine-tune dosages. And patients who wish to alleviate their symptoms without being too inebriated to function properly have a tough time reaching the right amount.”

According to CEO Davidson and his partner and general manager James Amihood, the Syqe Inhaler will eliminate this problem, as well as make it more difficult to resell the product on the black market. Their goal is for the pocket-sized device to serve in the future as a platform for administering other medications, too.

Energy does  grow on trees

Israeli engineers pioneer solar energy tree

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Sologic's eTree can produce electricity, give free WiFi, charge electronic devices and act as a computer

Does energy grow on trees? Israeli engineers have created a "solar tree" that is capable of producing electricity and of fulfilling a number of practical functions.

The eTree is an ecological sculpture that was developed by an Israeli renewable energy systems company called Sologic and was designed to resemble a tree.

According to the company's website, the eTree can fulfill a variety of functions, including offering a shaded recreation area, free WiFi, charging smartphones and other electronic devices, acting as an outlet for appliances, providing cold drinking water and even offering a computer monitor for people to chat with friends at other eTrees. On top of all this, it also provides night lighting.

The innovative solar tree is slated to be unveiled for the first time on Thursday at the HaNadiv Gardens near the Israeli town of Zikhron Ya'akov, Israeli news site Ynetreported.

The eTree's creators are looking to install their invention in both urban and residential areas, as well as in parks, cultural centers, and along hiking trails. The sculpture is intended to operate automatically and with little to no maintenance as well as provide electricity day and night.

It was designed by Israeli artist Yoav Ben-Dov and is made up of metal tubes, tempered glass and other materials that can withstand harsh weather conditions. According toYnet, the eTree will be able to produce up to 1,400 watts per hour, which amounts to roughly 7 kilowatts of power per day.

The radiation-free ecological invention might also be installed in cities in France and China in the future, the company said.

Top 10 Jewish/Israeli Innovations That We Could NOT Imagine Living Without Them

Google

Do not use the most popular search engine to answer your thoughts/questions since it was developed by Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin(Jewish).

Facebook

At home,work or wherever you are, do not use Facebook as it was developed by Mark Zuckerberg(Jewish).

Waze

The Best GPS-based geographical navigation application program for smartphones with GPS support and display screens which provides turn-by-turn information and user-submitted travel times and route details, downloading location-dependent information over the mobile telephone network. It was developed by the Israeli start-up Waze Mobile, which was acquired by Google in 2013.

Cell-Phones

The cellular phone would still look like an oversized brick if it weren’t for Israeli know-how in mobile technologies. It was at Motorola’s Israel R&D center that Israeli engineers first developed original cell-phone technology.

Most of the technology in your mobile phone can be traced back to Israeli engineering.

Computer Operation Systems

Microsoft’s two most popular operating systems, NT and XP, were developed primarily in Israel. Microsoft has had a strong presence in Israel for many years, and has two R&D centers in Herzliya that employ 600 people.

Computer Printing

Israeli inventor Benny Landa revolutionized the world of digital printing when his Rehovot company, Indigo, launched the E-Print 1000 in 1993. It was a turning point for the printing industry, enabling printers to print directly from a computer file.

Apple Products

Israeli flash memory developer Anobit has developed a chip that significantly improves the endurance, performance and cost of flash storage products and systems. The chips can already be found in Apple’s iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air, as well as in several Samsung devices.

Gaming Consoles

Do not purchase any games devices as these are likely to use Israeli technology.

USB

The Disk-on-Key was developed by M-Systems, a company founded by three Israelis. The data storage device was launched in September 2000, and since then has become almost as ubiquitous worldwide as the paper clip.

Voice Mail

Turn off your voice-mail service and delete any recorded messages. Israeli companies invented the voice-mail system. If someone you do not know answers your phone-call, then hang up. Israeli call-centers and call-centre technology is in widespread operation in the UK.

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Israeli company offers cure for Ebola

Protalix says it has the resources to produce experimental medicine ZMapp, which has run out elsewhere

The death toll from the Ebola epidemic has climbed above 2,000, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Friday, as it voiced hopes a vaccine could be available in November.

"Ebola in West Africa"AFP

However, supplies of experimental medicines -- including the prototype drug ZMapp -- are limited, and "will not be sufficient for several months to come," the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned Friday.

Protalix, an Israeli biopharmaceutical company, said Saturday that it has the resources to produce the coveted ZMapp, which has recently run out, Israeli site The Times of Israel, citing Channel 2 TV's report, said Sunday.

In an interview with Channel 2, Dr. Yossi Shaaltiel, the executive vice president of research and development at Protalix, said: “Today our production capacity exceeds our needs, and we would certainly be happy to have the company producing the Ebola drug have us produce the drug for them. We would know how to do it effectively, in large quantities, and in a relatively short period of time.”

ZMapp has been given to about 10 infected health workers, including Americans and Europeans, of whom three recovered. WHO assistant director general Marie-Paule Kieny told reporters "there is not enough experience with ZMapp to conclude whether this treatment works or not," adding "there seem to be encouraging signs."

When the company started out, Shaaltiel said, “We were considered crazy.”

“Now we are proving that we are the only ones working with the [kind of] plants that [are developed into] pharmaceutical drugs which are approved,” he said.

According to the UN health organization's data, the deadly Ebola virus has claimed 2,097 lives out of 3,944 people infected in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, since emerging last December.

Israelis test gold-plated ‘cardiac patch’ to treat heart attacks

Researchers hope ‘cardiac patch’ powered by nano-gold can reverse damage from heart attacks for first time

BY ANDREW TOBIN October 2, 2014, 

The only treatment for advanced heart disease today is a transplant (photo credit: Heart image)

Israeli researchers are testing a biocompatible gold-plated “cardiac patch” built by using the patient’s own tissues — and with the potential to reverse heart damage for the first time.

Up to now, serious heart damage from attacks or disease can be treated only by heart transplants. While the procedure has saved thousands of lives over the past half century, the main drawbacks are a lack of enough donors, rejection rates, and high costs.

If it were possible to transplant just parts of the heart muscle to replace damaged sections, that would be a promising alternative. But researchers have yet to figure out how to get the replacement tissue, called a cardiac patch, to conduct electricity or to be accepted by the recipient’s immune system.

In a forward-looking study published in the journal Nano Letters in September, the Israeli researchers tested a cardiac patch they engineered using a new technique and enhanced with gold nanoparticles. The gold nanoparticles appeared to improve the cardiac patch’s electrical conductivity. Heartbeat is controlled by electrical impulses generated by the heart tissue itself.

Prof. Tal Dvir, a bioengineer at Tel Aviv University, who led the study, at work in his lab. (photo credit: Courtesy)

While they used animal tissues in the study, the researchers say that in the future, the same kind of cardiac patch could be made from the tissues of a human transplant recipient. In this form, the patch could be personalized to also avoid immune system rejection. Clinical trials are several years away.

A golden opportunity

A heart attack blocks blood supply to the heart, damaging or killing affected tissue. Because heart cells cannot multiply, and because heart muscles contain few stem cells, the tissue is unable to repair itself. Along with other technologies, cardiac patches are being developed to repair the heart without replacing it.

If the kinks are worked out, the impact could be significant.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Western countries. The only treatment for advanced heart disease today is heart transplant. But almost half of the people on donation lists today have been waiting for more than a year, and about the same percentage of people die within five years of their first heart attack, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

‘The patches we made using the gold are much superior’

Dvir has been engineering heart tissue in his lab since 2011, using various materials like animal tissues, collagen springs, and gold nanoparticles. In the latest study, he and his students engineered the first cardiac patch made with animal tissues and with gold nanoparticles. Dvir introduced the engineering technique in a study published this summer.

Cardiac patches are engineered by allowing heart cells to grow on a 3-D scaffold, similar to the extracellular matrix that naturally supports the cells in the heart. In the study, the researchers derived the extracellular matrix for their cardiac patch from a membrane taken from a pig’s abdomen, a biomaterial also found in humans.

Because foreign bodies can trigger an immune system response in a recipient, they removed all the pig cells and antigens from the membrane. They then coated the remaining cocktail-napkin-sized scaffold with gold nanoparticles.

To turn the gold-coated scaffold into a cardiac patch, the researchers “seeded” it with stem cells taken from rat hearts. Over time, the cells came together to form a tissue that generated its own electrical impulses and expanded and contracted spontaneously.

With microscopic imaging and chemical and electrical tests, the researchers found that the cardiac patch looked more like natural heart tissue and contracted more forcefully with less electrical stimulation than did a cardiac patch without a golden sheen.

“The results we got were very nice,” said Dvir. “We saw good electrical signaling, which is extremely important to the heart. The patches we made using the gold are much superior.”

Making it personal

The researchers say the heart cells grown in cardiac patches need time to develop the proteins that enable them to conduct electricity — time someone with heart damage may not have. With their cardiac patch, they say, the gold nanoparticles do the job until the proteins can.

Since finishing the study, the researchers have been transplanting the cardiac patch into rats with damaged hearts. Preliminary results suggest that the gold-coating greatly improves the cardiac patches’ capacity to conduct electricity from the healthy part of the heart, they say.

The next step is to try making the cardiac patches with tissue from the rats receiving them.

From there, it’s on to larger animals, and eventually to clinical trials. 

A cure for ALL cancers is on the way as Israeli scientists make major breakthrough

MILLIONS of cancer ­sufferers have been given fresh hope of a cure after ground-breaking research.

By: Giles Sheldrick

.The breakthrough came in a 16-year study of the only ­animal immune to cancer 

  .The discovery by an Israeli specialist was last night hailed as “radical and potentially life-changing

In a world first, Professor Aaron Avivi and his team found that cells from the blind mole rat       and its cousin the naked mole rat secrete a substance that destroys cancer cells in mammals – including humans.    Experts think harvesting this substance and making it safe to digest could wipe out a disease that kills eight million people each year worldwide. Last night Prof Avivi, of Haifa University in Israel was heading to London where he is due  to present his findings to professionals.   His radical approach studied the two species of rat that both live mostly underground – which the team discovered had led to a dramatic evolution of their metabolism.

Blind mole rats outlive other rodents by at least 20 years with no outward signs of ageing. Researchers have never located a cancerous tumour on one of them.Millions of cancer sufferers are given fresh hope for a cure [picposedby model GETTY]

The team tested the underground rodents and regular mice and rats with two potent carcinogens. Ordinary mice and rats developed tumours – none was found in the subterranean rats.     The study, published in the widely respected BMC Biology Journal, concluded: “Blind mole rats are resistant to spontaneous cancer but also to experimentally induced cancer.

“It shows the unique ability of the blind mole rat to inhibit growth and kill cancer cells, but not normal cells. It has evolved efficient anti-cancer mechanisms. Exploring the molecular mechanisms may hold the key for understanding the nature of resistance to cancer and identify new strategies for treating humans. The study was described as “exciting” by Prof Penella Woll, of the University of Sheffield’s department of oncology. She said: “Other researchers have taken a similar approach, studying sea creatures with intrinsic cancer resistance to develop the anti-cancer drug ­trabectedin – so we know that this can succeed

Cancer care specialist Prof Sam Ahmedzai said: “If Prof Avivi’s research can help us identify what genetic changes have occurred in the blind mole rat – and if that knowledge can allow us to modify humans’ genetic codes – then this is a radically and potentially life-saving treatment.

BEN GURION UNIVERSITY -  first Israeli university to become member of US National Academy of Inventors

 

 

 

The Beersheba institution of higher learning was recognized as being one of the 100 leading universities in the world for the number of applied US patents.

Students at Hebrew University. (photo credit:MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

 

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has accepted the invitation of the US National Academy of Inventors to become an official associate member.

“We appreciate your innovative institution and your researchers, and we are excited to accept you as a member of the NAI,” the academy’s founder and president, Prof. Paul R. Sanberg, said.

The academy has associate member universities in seven countries outside the US, and BGU will be the first in Israel, BGU president Prof. Rivka Carmi said on Sunday. “We are proud to receive the invitation as recognition of our achievements. It will help us innovate and promote applied research.”

In 2013, the Beersheba institution of higher learning was recognized as being one of the 100 leading universities in the world for the number of applied US patents. Having many such patents, said Carmi, reflects the “spirit of fruitful innovation through unusual inventions that have a tangible influence on the quality of life, economic development and the welfare of the society.”

The NAI includes more than 3,000 inventors at 200 institutions.

It was founded four years ago by Sanberg, who is executive director of the University of South Florida’s Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair.

The academy’s aims are to enhance the visibility of university and nonprofit research institute technology and academic innovation; encourage the disclosure of intellectual property; educate and mentor innovative students; promote the translation of the inventions of its members to benefit society; and increase public exposure to technology and innovation based in academic institutions.                   

             

            

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Israeli researchers: Not so fast on artificial sweetener settled science

 

Find artificial sweeteners boost diabetes risk — Will anti-Israel academic boycotters ignore these

findings?

     

Posted by William A. Jacobson    Thursday, September 18, 2014     

 

It’s a good thing we still have scientists who refuse to accept settled science and scientific consensus, and keep on digging and questioning prevailing wisdoms.
It seems that many of such scientists are in Israel, perhaps because politicized scientific conformity is not as prized in the “start-up nation” as it is in Euorpe and the U.S.

One example from Israel we reported on previously was Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded scientific denier:

Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman won the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for his discovery of quasicrystals, a mosaic-like chemical structure that researchers previously thought was impossible.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Shechtman’s discovery in 1982 fundamentally changed the way chemists look at solid matter. It initially faced strong objections from the scientific community, and even got him kicked out of his research group in the United States.

Now another, from AFP via Times of Israel, Sweeteners boost diabetes risk, Israeli study finds:

Promoted as an aid to good health, artificial sweeteners may in fact be boosting diabetes risk, said an Israeli study Wednesday that urged a rethink of their widespread use and endorsement….
After leaving a sensation of sweetness on the tongue, NAS [Non-caloric artificial sweeteners] molecules pass through the intestinal tract without being absorbed.
This explains why, unlike sugar, they add negligibly, if at all, to the calorie count.
But Israeli scientists reported in the journal Nature that experiments on lab mice and a small group of humans found NAS disrupted the makeup and function of gut bacteria, and actually hastened glucose intolerance.
“Artificial sweeteners were extensively introduced into our diets with the intention of reducing caloric intake and normalizing blood glucose levels without compromising the human ‘sweet tooth,’” the paper said.
“Our findings suggest that NAS may have directly contributed to enhancing the exact epidemic that they themselves were intended to fight,” it said bluntly.
Scientists led by Eran Elinav and Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel added three commonly-used types of NAS — aspartame, sucralose or saccharin — to the drinking water of mice in body-size appropriate doses equivalent to recommended maximum human intake.

Oh, and one more thing.
The Weizmann Institute of Science is subject to the academic boycott of Israel championed by Steven Salaita, the controversial almost-U. Illinois professor and his supporters at the American Studies Association and in some pockets of academia.

[Weizmann Institute of Science via Wikimedia Commons]

The academic BDS supporters should ignore these Israeli research findings, in the spirit of anti-Zionist solidarity.

Israeli IPO’s World-Beating 73% Surge Leads August Rally

 

 

By Gabrielle Coppola   

 

Mobileye NV (MBLY), the technology company that went public a month ago, led gains among U.S.-listed Israeli stocks in August as investors shrugged off concern that the seven-week Gaza conflict will weaken the economy.

Mobileye has surged 73 percent to $43.22 since listing in New York on July 31, the biggest rally among all companies globally that raised $500 million or more in the past three months. Caesarstone Sdot-Yam Ltd. (CSTE), the maker of quartz counter-tops, climbed 20 percent in August, the second-best performance on the Bloomberg Israel-U.S. Equity Index, which rose 4.8 percent.

While signs have emerged that the Gaza fighting is starting to curb output at some Israeli businesses, hurt tourism and cut into consumer spending, investors have shown little concern, instead bidding up stocks in line with gains being posted in the U.S. and other major global markets. The performance of Mobileye and Caesarstone, which has more than tripled since its 2012 listing, could help bolster demand for more Israeli initial public offerings, according to Josef Schuster, the founder of Chicago-based IPOX Schuster LLC.

“Momentum drives everything right now,” Schuster said by phone Aug. 28. “Mobileye and Caesarstone, if you held that, you made a lot of money.”

The Nasdaq Composite Index (CCMP) advanced 4.8 percent this month, while the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index gained 3.8 percent, breaking the 2,000 mark on Aug. 26, 27 and 29.

Investors are pouring money into equities on optimism the U.S. economy is strengthening and as European Central Bank President Mario Draghi signaled policy makers may introduce an asset-buying plan to bolster growth amid slowing inflation.

Record IPO

Executives at Mobileye didn’t respond to a request for comment made after business hours in Israel.

Mobileye’s $1 billion IPO was the biggest in the U.S. by an Israeli company on record, part of a rush of deals last month. Six Israeli companies have gone public in the U.S. this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Eight more have offerings pending.

“We’re continuing to see moderate appetite for IPOs in the U.S. by Israeli companies,” Phyllis Korff, a lawyer at Skadden Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in New York, said in an e-mail. “This activity could continue through the end of 2014 and into the first quarter of 2015,” said Korff, who worked on the Mobileye offering.

The Jerusalem-based technology company, whose customers include luxury electric-carmaker Tesla Motors Inc., posted 2013 net income of $19.9 million following two years of losses, according to its IPO prospectus. Revenue in 2013 was $81.2 million, more than double the figure from 2012.

Rate Cut

“People are buying it on the hope of great growth,” Brian Krawez, who oversees $3 billion at Scotts Valley, California-based Scharf Investments, said by phone Aug. 28. “People were very skeptical of the stock market, they missed a lot of the rally. Now with the market up, they’re moving cash from the sidelines.”

While global financial markets have shrugged off fighting in Gaza, it has begun to take its toll on Israel’s economy. The Bank of Israel unexpectedly cut interest rates to a record low on Aug. 25 in an attempt to boost an economy already hit by slowing exports.

Israeli growth slowed in the second quarter to 1.7 percent from 2.8 percent in the previous three months, as exports, which account for about a third of the economy, tumbled 18 percent, according to official data released Aug. 17.

Stock Gains

An Egyptian-brokered truce that started Aug. 26 halted seven weeks of fighting that killed more than 2,100 Palestinians and 70 on the Israeli side, according to official tallies.

The local TA-25 Index (TA-25) rose 0.6 percent this month, trailing the 4.8 percent gain on the Bloomberg Israel-US Index. Tel Aviv stocks have appreciated 5.3 percent this year, compared with an 11 percent advance for U.S.-listed Israeli stocks.

Caesarstone, which makes quartz kitchen counter-tops, surged this month after issuing a new full-year sales estimate that surpassed analysts’ projections. The stock has appreciated 373 percent since its IPO in March of 2012.

“They’re just executing extremely well and the stock was cheap at the onset,” Schuster said. “It’s one of those stocks you wish you had held on to forever.” ((An earlier version of this story corrected the law firm’s name in the ninth paragraph.)) 

 

 

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GOOD NEWS FROM TINNY ISRAEL FOR RELIEF OF MILLIONS  PEOPLE WORLDWIDE

Came from Haifa University,  Israel

EXCLUSIVE: A cure for ALL cancers is on the way as scientists make major breakthrough

MILLIONS of cancer ­sufferers have been given fresh hope of a cure after ground-breaking research.

By: Giles Sheldrick

Published: Thu, January 16, 2014

Scientists have made huge leaps in cancer research [picposedbymodel REUTERS]

The breakthrough came in a 16-year study of the only ­animal immune to cancer.

The discovery by an Israeli specialist was last night hailed as “radical and potentially life-changing”.

In a world first, Professor Aaron Avivi and his team found that cells from the blind mole rat and its cousin the naked mole rat secrete a substance that destroys cancer cells in mammals – including humans.

Experts think harvesting this substance and making it safe to digest could wipe out a disease that kills eight million people each year worldwide. Last night Prof Avivi, of Haifa University in Israel was heading to London where he is due  to present his findings to professionals.

His radical approach studied the two species of rat that both live mostly underground – which the team discovered had led to a dramatic evolution of their metabolism.

Blind mole rats outlive other rodents by at least 20 years with no outward signs of ageing. Researchers have never located a cancerous tumour on one of them.

Millions of cancer sufferers are given fresh hope for a cure [picposedby model GETTY]

The team tested the underground rodents and regular mice and rats with two potent carcinogens. Ordinary mice and rats developed tumours – none was found in the subterranean rats.

The study, published in the widely respected BMC Biology Journal, concluded: “Blind mole rats are resistant to spontaneous cancer but also to experimentally induced cancer.

“It shows the unique ability of the blind mole rat to inhibit growth and kill cancer cells, but not normal cells. It has evolved efficient anti-cancer mechanisms.

“Exploring the molecular mechanisms may hold the key for understanding the nature of resistance to cancer and identify new strategies for treating humans.”

The study was described as “exciting” by Prof Penella Woll, of the University of Sheffield’s department of oncology. She said: “Other researchers have taken a similar approach, studying sea creatures with intrinsic cancer resistance to develop the anti-cancer drug ­trabectedin – so we know that this can succeed.”

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• How to get a life after cancer
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• Brian May celebrates prostate cancer all-clear

Cancer care specialist Prof Sam Ahmedzai said: “If Prof Avivi’s research can help us identify what genetic changes have occurred in the blind mole rat – and if that knowledge can allow us to modify humans’ genetic codes – then this is a radically and potentially life-saving treatment.

“There will undoubtedly be many years of extracting the relevant parts of the mole rats’ genetic differences and then – the most difficult aspect – bringing those gene extracts into humans. Prof Avivi is to be congratulated on opening up an exciting new phase of research.”

Oliver Childs, of Cancer Research UK, added: “It’s a long way off, but it will be interesting to see if further research can find a way to help prevent or treat cancer in humans.”

In Britain, nearly 350,000 people are diagnosed with cancer every year. Macmillan Cancer Support predicts the number who will get cancer during their lifetime will rise to nearly half the UK population by 2020. Other studies forecast global cancer rates will increase to 16 million new cases by the same year.