{"id":8067,"date":"2024-03-24T10:45:22","date_gmt":"2024-03-24T10:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/?post_type=article&p=8067"},"modified":"2024-04-07T08:07:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-07T08:07:19","slug":"molecules-of-hope","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/innovationisrael.org.il\/en\/article\/molecules-of-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Molecules of Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


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Two Israeli companies in the field of biomedicine are developing technologies that defy the imagination: Quris creates miniature human organs that enable the safe, quick, cheap, and personalized testing of drugs at a lower cost; Qulab Medical is developing patches that facilitate the prevention and treatment of diabetes.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n


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Dr. Isaac Bentwich, the founder and CEO of Quris.AI<\/strong>, is a physician by training and an entrepreneur by vocation. Quris is the fourth company he has founded and led to global success in the field of AI used in medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quris’s field of activity sounds like science fiction: a miniature human organ \u2013 a one-millimeter brain or beating heart or a third-millimeter liver \u2013 immersed in a small quantity of liquid within a small test tube. And not just any organ, but rather one that belongs to a specific person, something called an “organ-on-a-chip”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process defies imagination: the miniature organ belonging to a specific person is created from a mere blood sample. When several such organs are combined, the result is a “patient-on-a-chip”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s amazing”, Dr. Bentwich agrees, “but we didn’t invent it”. The field of organs on a chip has been at the forefront of science in the last decade but it has only matured during the past two years, with the publication of hundreds of articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another step forward occurred 18 years ago with a discovery that won the Nobel Prize \u2013 of induced stem cells. In other words, scientists discovered a way to create stem cells not from an embryo, but rather from a mature cell such as blood. This “magic” also contributed to the making of “organs-on-a-chip”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no need today to open the brain and remove a piece. It’s enough simply to take a blood sample, to turn it into a specific stem cell, and to encode it biologically by adding substances that cause a stem cell grown in one test tube to become a miniature brain and another cell grown in a different test tube to become a liver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“When we talk about having a brain in a test tube, we’re naturally not talking about a brain that thinks thoughts, but it is a specific person\u2019s organ, one that differs from that of another person, and when we drip a certain drug on the brain or the liver, it will react similarly to how that person\u2019s  organ  would react”, Dr. Bentwich explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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92% Failure: Developing Modern Drugs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Let’s take a step back and look at how the medical world developed drugs until now. “If we look at the wider picture”, Dr. Bentwich explains, “we see that until now, the entire medical field, and specifically the development of new drugs, failed to take the differences between the individuals into consideration: men are different from women, Caucasians are different from Chinese \u2013 we are all different from each other”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “old world\u2019s” pharmaceutical industry was based on a kind of funnel: the process started from the scientists’ general understanding of the body’s mechanisms. Whether an antidepressant or an antibiotic, the process involves a study of the human body and an identification of the drug’s objective i.e., how it will benefit a patient’s health. That is how the long end extremely expensive journey of developing a new drug starts in the medical industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the next stage, millions of molecules are scanned in an attempt to assess what best meets every need. Several molecules that are identified as potentially efficient are then examined in greater depth on a culture of cells in the lab. For example, if we are looking to develop an antidepressant, we grow a culture of brain cells in a petri dish. “This method works sometimes”, says Dr. Bentwich, “but it is not accurate. First, because it’s not actually a real brain, but rather just one type of cell without 3D-type integration with other cells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The next stage is to locate a molecule that has a chance to work. We drip it onto a petri dish of say, brain-neuron cells, and if it works well, we can hypothesize that it could be developed into a drug and we try to guess how it will work in the human body. Because we can’t administer the drug to humans, we test it on animals. Naturally, this isn’t ideal because a mouse is not a human, but mice do at least have a somewhat similar systemic reaction: an intestine that absorbs drugs, a liver that metabolizes them, a kidney that excretes them, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To what degree is this inefficient? “The answer to that question is the number that constituted my inspiration to found Quris”, says Dr. Bentwich. “92 percent of all drugs that have been successfully tested on animals \u2013 fail in clinical trials on humans!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To illustrate how problematic this is he proposes that we imagine a world in which we want to build a skyscraper. You go to the best contractor, engineer, and architect, and they say: unfortunately, we need to plan and build ten skyscrapers, knowing full well that nine of them are going to collapse \u2013 we have no idea which one. The only thing that can be done is to complete the construction of the ten buildings, wait patiently for nine of them to fall, and then increase the price of the remaining building to justify the construction of all ten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is the mechanics and dynamic in the trillion-dollar pharmaceutical industry”, Dr. Bentwich explains. The average cost of developing a new drug is 2.6 billion dollars \u2013 simply because it includes all the failures along the way. How much should it have cost? Only 200 million dollars, but it’s expensive because behind each successful drug, there are 5 or 10 failed attempts. “This all means that finding a way that will enable us to make predictions with less than 90 percent errors is something that will make a profound change in this world”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The innovative development processes became more relevant than ever this past December when the US passed a law that will change this reality: the FDA announced that it is no longer mandatory to conduct trials on animals. “In practice”, Dr. Bentwich says, “the regulator is proposing to look at three areas: Artificial Intelligence, organ-on-a-chip, and stem cells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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