Medical Breakthrough At HU’s Technology Transfer Office

Another great medical breakthrough at HU’s Technology Transfer Office! Quite at the forefront of tech news in the world today is Jerusalem’s Hebrew University (HU) with Yissum, being the university’s Technology Transfer Office that manages the university’s Technology Transfer Opportunities, achieving another great technological advancement in the field of medicine. With its works aimed at leveraging the universities’ discoveries across the globe, Yissum has finally introduced such a novel device that enhances the diagnostic value of saliva and which also provides a quick, efficient and non-invasive diagnostic tool that could replace many blood and other invasive tests. Saliva, as researches indicate, offers a useful method of detecting various diseases such as cancers, heart disease, diabetes, periodontal disease, and many other conditions as well as infectious diseases like HIV. As part of the digestive system, saliva contains proteins that help digest food where one of them called amylase represents up to 60% of saliva proteins which can hamper diagnostic tests by masking the presence of other components. This signifies a problem in saliva, so, to make saliva as an effective diagnostic tool is to clear the whole saliva of this protein. However, the positive side of saliva is that the sample can be obtained very quickly and simply when compared to other similar blood or urine tests, which also offers an inexpensive and non-invasive procedure that patients could even perform at home since most molecules found in blood and urine are also detectable in lower concentrations in the mouth.

This new diagnostic tool was presented to a large audience of various backgrounds during the ILSI BioMed Israel 2008 to have an enormous commercial potential and that the potential commercial market is equally enormous. USA alone invested over $65 in the development of diagnostic kits based on saliva where the global market for biomarkers was said to have reached $5.6 billion in 2007 and is still expected to rise to $12.8 billion by 2012. Professor Aaron Palmon has been working with his research student Omer Deutsch from the Institute of Dental Sciences along with Dr. Doran Afraiman, Head of the Salivary Glad Clinic, Department of Oral Medicine, the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine. They conceived and created a simple, disposable device that removes amylase from saliva and other fluids in the body by merely using a modified potato starch to absorb large quantities of amylase. The device then clears saliva of the protein increasing its diagnostic value and enabling detection of low concentrations of biomarkers.

This is really an amazingly extraordinary creation of an innovative device that makes complicated tests simple. Science doesn’t stop there—Yissum continues to surprise the world with more medical tech news on its discovery and development of a novel orally available drug that prevents metastasis formation in various types of cancer without inducing adverse side effects. HU’s School of Pharmacy’s Professors Eli Breuer, Reuven Reich and Amnon Hoffman worked together to develop the project, which was published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. The new drug called cis-ACCP is a small molecule which is a prototype of a family of compounds that may be administered orally that inhibits matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), which are extracellular enzymes known to play a pivotal role in tissue remodeling and repair. Pathological over-expression of MMPs has been associated with chronic diseases such as cancer, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, arteriosclerosis, congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, liver cirrhosis and others. Pre-clinical experiments showed that the drug prevented cancer cells from invading adjacent tissue, thus, forming metastases, and is effective in the treatment of melanoma and prostate cancer with significant results indicating reductions in both tumor growth and mesatasis formation through the use of cis-ACCP. The development of both products represents another potentially huge commercial success for Yissum and the Hebrew University.

Medical successes of Yissum started since 1964 when it was appointed to take charge of protecting the Hebrew University’s intellectual properties, managing their Technology Transfer Opportunities and commercializing them. Ranked among the world’s top technology transfer companies, Yissum boasts over 5500 patents, 1600 inventions, 480 technologies, and 65 companies with sales of up to $1 billlion per year. Yissum’s business partners include Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Merch, Intel, Teva, and many more. Visit www.yissum.co.il to learn more about Hebrew University’s Yissum and its technology transfer opportunities.