Israeli startups raise $1.4 billion in Q2, highlighted by $300 million Volkswagen investment in Gett
Israeli startups raised $1.4 billion in the second quarter of 2016, highlighted by a $300 million investment in Gett (a taxi app) by Volkswagen. But that's not the whole story. Most of the investments were much smaller, which means that early stage Israeli companies
can still raise money.
The average amount raised per company in the second quarter was $27.9
million, or $12.1 million if the Gett investment is subtracted,
$500,000 less than the average in the first quarter. This is more or
less the amount of capital an earlier stage company already making
initial revenue needs to keep going for 12-18 months. For the first half
of the year, the average amount raised per company was $14.1 million,
or $12.4 million excluding Gett.
13% of the companies raising
money since the beginning of the year were biomedical companies, meaning
companies developing drugs or medical equipment or a different medical
solution. This means that the majority of available capital for
investment is still going to technology companies, because their risk
profile is naturally lower. The biomedical companies account for only
10% of the amount raised since the beginning of the year.
Three
companies raised over $50 million in the second quarter, compared with
four companies in the first quarter - almost the same, but only two
compared with four if the Gett investment is excluded. This makes a
total of seven companies since the beginning of the year - only 4.2% of
all companies raising capital. This figure may indicate a slowdown in
the number of potential unicorns - a company value of over $1 billion,
which are often successful at raising this amount of money. Gett, which
raised $300 million, and Via, which raised $100 million, may be valued
in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but they are still far away from
$1 billion - at least as of now.
The companies that raised over
$50 million jointly accounted for 22% of the total raised in the second
quarter and 29% of the amount raised in the first half of the year - in
other words, 4% of the companies raised 29% of the total, showing that a
very small number of companies receive a substantial proportion of the
venture capital funds' investment budget.
86% of the companies
raised up to $25 million in the second quarter, meaning that most of the
companies that raised capital were just starting out (initial revenue).
The proportion was the same for the first half of the year. These
companies raised 45% of the total in the second quarter (47% in the
first half), showing that there were many small companies and few large
companies (although it is important to keep in mind that the bigger a
company grows, the less it needs to raise capital, and the proportion of
small companies is therefore greater).
And a reminder - again - that representing early stage companies and people investing in them is something I do for a living, so if you're looking for investors or looking to invest, please drop me an email at IsraelMatzav@gmail.com.
Labels: biotech, Israeli high tech, personal stuff, venture capital
Jimmy Carter saved by jointly developed US-Israel cancer drug
Hamas-loving former US President Jimmy Carter is now
cancer free thanks to a cancer drug developed by a
joint US-Israeli team. This is from the first link.
Carter announced in August that he had been diagnosed with melanoma
that had spread to his brain and laid out a treatment plan, including a
round of targeted radiation at the brain tumors and doses of an
immune-boosting drug every three weeks. Keytruda, the drug, was approved
not long before Carter's announcement and helps his body seek out and
destroy cancer cells.
Carter's spokeswoman Deanna Congileo said in an email
that Carter received doses of the drug from August through February.
She said his doctors will continue to perform scans to ensure cancer
cells have not returned, and Carter will "resume treatment if
necessary."
A spokesman for Emory University's Winship Cancer
Institute, where Carter has been treated, declined to comment on Sunday,
citing patient privacy.
Medical experts have called Keytruda and similar
immune therapy drugs "game-changing" for patients with melanoma. But the
drugs are relatively new, and doctors are still learning about how they
should be used, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer
for the American Cancer Society. He is not involved in Carter's
treatment.
"Some people believe they should be continued as long
as a patient is doing well, some feel the drugs should continue for a
period of time and then be stopped," Lichtenfeld said. "This is clearly a
(decision) based on individual evidence specific to the president and
made with his doctors."
Carter will continue to receive doses of the drug every three weeks. Here's a story from 2014 on the
development team.
"This medicine is a
miracle cure - it's a real breakthrough," says Prof. Jacob Schachter,
head of research and treatment of melanoma and skin cancer at Sheba
Medical Center, who is part of the international research team for the
medicine.
The new treatment comes
from the field of immunotherapy, which helps the immune system fight
cancer, unlike chemotherapy, which attacks the tumor itself. There are
various types of cancerous tumors, such as melanoma, that use a "shield"
to protect themselves from being identified by the immune system. The
new medicine paralyzes this type of screening mechanism, so the immune
system can recognize the cancer and attack it.
The results of the
international research suggest that using the medicine Pembrolizumab,
also known as MK-3475, yields impressive survival rates in patients with
advanced cancer, with 69 percent surviving one year and 63 percent
surviving 18 months.
Without this treatment, patients with metastatic melanoma die from
the disease within 4-5 months, after reaching stage four cancer. The
research tested 41,818 patients, 1,800 of them in Israel. The research
took place over a decade, while the clinical stage took four years.
The new medicine, which belongs to a new generation of biological
drugs, yielded extraordinary results to the point that the FDA approved
it for "compassionate use" (the use of an investigational drug outside a
clinical trial by patients with life-threatening conditions) and it
will be given for free to terminally ill patients. It is also be fast
tracked for approval, which is expected by October.
"One of my patients
who suffered metastatic melanoma in very critical condition entered the
trial, and within six weeks his body was completely clean of cancer,"
said Schachter. He stressed that because of the biological nature of the
drug; its side effects are minimal and allows patients optimal quality
of life.
Merck, the American company that developed the drug, has a department
in Israel called MSD, which operates a research division working in
tandem with medical centers in Israel.
"We are on our way to turn melanoma a treatable chronic disease,"
said Schachter. "We are also seeing positive results in other types of
cancer such as the urinary bladder, head neck and lungs". Prof. Alise
Reicin, who heads the American team that developed the drug, termed it
"definitely a breakthrough in the war against cancer".
Meanwhile, Carter's friends at Hamas are still working on a drug to create suicide bombers....
Labels: biotech, cancer victims, Hamas, Jimmy Carter
Israel develops blood test for breast cancer
Something else for the BDS'ers to boycott. Israeli scientists have developed a
blood test for the early detection of breast cancer.
The Octava Pink test is now available in Israel and Italy, and is
undergoing clinical trials to receive US Food and Drug Administration
approval.
This is the first blood test ever that can reveal
cancer, not merely markers that might indicate cancer or something else.
Its innovation also lies in its examination of antibodies in the blood
to pinpoint this specific cancer.
Molecular biologist Galit
Yahalom — who heads the research team at the EventusDx offices and lab,
located in Moshav Ora outside of Jerusalem – explains the breakthrough
to ISRAEL21c.
“For the last decade, we have known that there is a
connection between cancer and the immune system,” says Yahalom, a
43-year-old mother of two from Modi’in who has been working on this
project since its inception.
“We know that it recognizes cancer as
an external enemy that must be destroyed. It is possible that each of
us has had instances of cancer we were unaware of, because our immune
systems killed it when it was still very small. For whatever reason, the
immune system of people with cancer is not functioning properly.”
...
Another innovation is the nanotechnology developed at EventusDx,
which enables testing 96 blood samples simultaneously. This process
takes no more than three hours, allowing a woman’s doctor to rule out or
confirm breast cancer very quickly.
Speed, of course, is as
important in breast-cancer detection as accuracy – not only for those
whose results confirm their physicians’ suspicions or diagnoses of
breast cancer, but also for those found to be cancer-free.
This is
because false positives and false negatives are frequent. According to
Yahalom, “Only 20 to 30 of every 100 biopsies performed as a result of
growths detected in mammograms reveal cancer; the rest are benign.
Meanwhile, 50% of young women with breast cancer, and 30% of older women
with breast cancer, are diagnosed as healthy.”
The Octava Pink
test has had astounding results, correctly diagnosing 95% of the healthy
women and 75% of those with breast cancer.
Though one in nine
women will contract breast cancer at some point in their lifetime, only
three in 1,000 have it at any given moment. This is why it is important
for women to get regular checkups and to be provided this extra tool to
assuage their fears.
This particular tool costs NIS 700 (about
$200), not including the fee charged by the doctor who purchases the
Octava kit and sends it to Yahalom’s lab.
You want to boycott Israel? Die!
Labels: BDS, biotech, cancer victims, Israeli high tech
Israeli company receives US patent for potential ALS cure
An Israeli company has received a
US patent for a potential cure for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), which is commonly referred to in the US as
Lou Gehrig's disease after the Yankee Hall-of-Famer who died from it. This is from the first link (Hat Tip:
Soccer Dad).
The patent covers BrainStorm's stem cells
induced to secrete elevated levels of neurotrophic factors for the
treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
Pending
approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, the company is
preparing for its upcoming mid-stage Phase II trial in the United States
with its NurOwn adult stem cell therapy.
BrainStorm
is developing NurOwn for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
(ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, a progressive
neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and
spinal cord.
Separately, the
company said it has signed a definitive agreement with Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston to conduct a Phase II clinical trial of
NurOwn in ALS, pending FDA approval. The other two clinical sites slated
for the trial are the University of Massachusetts Memorial Hospital and
Mayo Clinic.
"The recent bill
introduced to the U.S. Senate to support regenerative medicine research
is yet another indication of the increasing recognition that stem cells
hold the promise for curing life-threatening and debilitating conditions
like ALS," said Chaim Lebovits, BrainStorm's president.
"We
are very encouraged by the bill's proposal to appoint a council that
would develop and maintain a national strategy for the promotion of
regenerative medicine research and development."
What follows is a clip from Israel's Channel 2 television. The patient is a well-known Rosh Yeshiva in the Haredi community.
Let's go to the videotape.
הפוך בה והפוך בה דכולה בה.
Labels: biotech, God, Israeli high tech, Torah
If you're going to boycott Israel, make sure to boycott this....
If you're going to boycott Israel, make sure to boycott this....
Let's go to the videotape.
Labels: biotech, Israeli high tech
Israeli researchers find fountain of youth?
This hits close to home for me. As many of you know, my Dad of blessed memory had Alzheimer's (as his father probably did, but no one knew what it was in the late '60's). Now, Israeli researchers think they have found a way to
prevent or slow the brain's aging process. Since most people get Alzheimer's in their later years, if one can slow or prevent the brain from aging, one can prevent Alzheimer's.
Cohen’s first breakthrough in this area occurred when he discovered,
working with worms, that reducing the activity of the signaling
mechanism conveyed through insulin and a hormone called IGF1,
constituted a defense against the aggregation of a protein which is
mechanistically-linked with Alzheimer’s disease. Later, he found that
the inhibition of this signaling route also protected Alzheimer’s-model
mice from behavioral impairments and pathological phenomena typical to
the disease. In these studies, the path was reduced through genetic
manipulation, a method not applicable in humans.
Dr. Hadas
Reuveni, the CEO of TyrNovo, a startup company formed for the clinical
development of NT219, and Profesor Alexander Levitzki from the
Department of Biological Chemistry at the Hebrew University, with their
research teams, discovered a new set of compounds that inhibit the
activity of the IGF1 signaling cascade in a unique and efficient
mechanism, primarily for cancer treatment, and defined NT219 as the
leading compound for further development.
Now, in a fruitful
collaboration Cohen and Reuveni, together with Cohen’s associates Tayir
El-Ami and Lorna Moll, have demonstrated that NT219 efficiently inhibits
IGF1 signaling, in both worms and human cells. The inhibition of this
signaling pathway by NT219 protected worms from toxic protein
aggregation that in humans is associated with the development of
Alzheimer’s or Huntington’s disease.
...
Recently, Cohen’s laboratory obtained an ethical approval to test the
therapeutic efficiency of NT219 as a treatment in Alzheimer’s-model
mice, hoping to develop a future treatment for neurodegenerative
disorders that currently cannot be treated.
Sometimes this country can be awesome. But I'll be happy to see the BDS'ers boycotting this one.
Labels: Alzheimer's disease, biotech, Israeli high tech
#Tomorrow13 #BDSfail Hawking trip cancellation a hoax
In a previous post, I reported that physicist
Stephen Hawking is boycotting Israel by withdrawing from the President's Conference. That made me wonder whether Hawking would at least be morally consistent and extend his boycott to the company with the most advanced breakthrough for ALS, the disease from which he suffers. You see,
that company is Israeli too.
Although
this was not the main aim of the test, some of the 12 patients in the
phase 1/2 trial with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), the
muscle-wasting disease, as well as three further patients provided with
the experimental treatment, also showed highly unusual signs of
improvement, the company said.
Professor Dimitrios Karussis of the Neurology Department at Hadassah
Medical Center, Jerusalem, and principal investigator of the trial,
said: “We cannot ignore some possible promising indications of clinical
efficacy observed in single patients, such as a tendency towards
improvement in some of the major ALS Functional Rating Scale variables.”
The trial was conducted at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, and
the results have been reported to the Israeli Ministry of Health.
Read the whole thing.
In case you're wondering, according to this biography, Professor
Dimitrios Karussis holds Greek citizenship only. We must have been real racists to let him into the country.
/sarc
But the truth is that Professor Hawking is not boycotting Israel. He canceled his trip for health reasons and the BDS'ers jumped all over it using al-Guardian and the Beeb as
willing tools for their hoax.
The Guardian, which broke the story late last night, claimed that
Hawking was due to boycott Israel after receiving an erroneous statement
from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP),
apparently with Hawking's approval.
The statement said that the move was "his independent decision to
respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the
unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there".
However, a Cambridge university spokesperson has confirmed to The
Commentator that there was a "misunderstanding" this past weekend, and
that Prof. Hawking had pulled out of the conference for medical reasons.
Responding to an e-mail including an open letter to Prof. Hawking,
shared nearly 2000 times, a University spokesman said: "Professor
Hawking will not be attending the conference in Israel in June for
health reasons - his doctors have advised against him flying."
When asked for further information, the spokesperson confirmed that the
BRICUP organisation had "assumed" Hawking's position on the matter, and
that it was fundamentally untrue.
The Commentator was unable to reach BRICUP via telephone for comment....
Pretty nasty for BRICUP and its fellow travelers to use a man's illness to create a hoax, isn't it? And pretty irresponsible of al-Guardian and the Beeb to publish a story like that without - apparently - at least contacting Hawking's spokesman, isn't it? But then this fits pretty consistently with a pattern of #BDSfail, doesn't it?
Labels: BDS, biotech, boycott Israel, epic fail, President's Conference
Israeli company develops blood test for Alzheimer's
This hits really close to home. So close, that if anyone out there reading this knows how I can get this blood test, please email me (email address on the right side of the page). My father HK"M and grandfather z"l both had Alzheimer's. Now, an Israeli company has developed a
simple blood test to detect it early when it can still be treated.
“Today one of the main weaknesses in the Alzheimer’s area is that
patients don’t find out until it’s too late,” says Ilya Budik, CEO of NeuroQuest, an Israeli company developing a novel blood test for early detection of the most common cause of dementia worldwide.
“There are many new therapies under development, and the most
successful trials are showing the earlier a patient is treated, the
better likelihood of responding to the treatment,” he says.
A portfolio company of the government-supported Misgav Venture
Accelerator in northern Israel, NeuroQuest recently received $500,000 in
a funding round led by the InterTech Group in South Carolina and the
Maryland/Israel Trendlines Fund.
This half a million dollars will enable NeuroQuest to progress
towards a validation clinical trial at four US medical centers, and to
establish a US development center, possibly alongside its South Carolina
partners.
Its first human trials in Israel showed NeuroQuest’s test — which is
based on 20 years of research by Prof. Michal Schwartz of the Weizmann
Institute of Science — to be 87 percent accurate with an 85% specificity
rate in detecting Alzheimer’s and ALS, two common neurodegenerative
diseases. With blood tests, Budik explains, anything over 70% is
considered medically significant.
“That gave us proof of concept for Prof. Schwartz’s discovery that
certain parts of the immune system are involved in protecting the
central nervous system and also in healing it from neurodegenerative
diseases or neural injury,” Budik tells ISRAEL21c.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Alzheimer's disease, biotech, Israeli high tech
