Three selected news about business and innovation from Israel. This time from the fields: Oncology&Artificial Intelligence (AI), Democracy&Genomics and Biology. Selected and brought daily to you by Naftali – doing business and searching for innovation for 40 years.
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ONCOLOGY & AI > OncoHost raises 35 Mio. USD
OncoHost (Binyamina), a global leader in next-generation precision oncology for improved personalized cancer therapy, today announced the completion of a $35 million Series C funding round. The funding will go towards expanding OncoHost’s ongoing multicenter PROPHETIC trial which utilizes PROphet®, the company’s machine learning-based host response profiling platform, and supporting the imminent U.S. commercial launch of the precision oncology diagnostic solution.
Leveraging advanced proteomic analysis and AI-based host response science, OncoHost’s PROphet® platform is a personalized, real-time, dynamic ‘disease navigator’ that provides early identification of an individual’s responsiveness to cancer therapy, analysis of treatment resistance mechanisms, and potential available strategies to overcome this resistance.
GENOMICS&DEMOCRACY > Sequentify raises 7 Mill. USD to democratize Genomics
Sequentify (Rehovot), a Weizmann Institute of Science spinoff, enables fast and focused DNA sequencing. It combines tools from the synthetic biology and AI software fields to enable rapid targeted DNA sequencing. Sequentify exits stealth mode with $7M in raised funds led by Israel’s most active venture firm, OurCrowd. The funds will be used to accelerate R&D, delivery, and go-to-market plans for the company.
Sequentify, on track to 600% revenue growth, already has multiple hospitals and labs as customers, as well as over 70x valuation growth in less than18 months.
BIOLOGY & GENETIC > Weizmann Institute of Science’s Molecular Genetics Department: Transperon
New study of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Molecular Genetis Department (Rehovot) reveals a genetic regulation mechanism in eukaryotes ensuring that proteins that work together are expressed together. (…) “We named these RNA bundles “transperons,” to describe messenger RNAs that have originated from different chromosomes but act as a sort of functional unit, like the bacterial operon,” says Prof. Jeffrey Gerst. Dr. Rohini Nair then tested the newly formulated “transperon” hypothesis on a universal cellular process known as the “heatshock response,” which is performed by a group of different proteins in response to unfavorably warm temperatures. The team then found that for this cellular process, the messenger RNAs appear to have assembled together as a “transperon” bundle. “These findings point to a possible early evolutionary event that must have granted eukaryotes the flexibility needed for creating new cellular processes,” says Gerst.
Out of the Box > Dream and AI
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