Israeli Company Seeks to Develop Micro-Robots to B
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A biotechnology company from Israel is working to revolutionize the medical industry by developing micro-robots to boost precision medicine. Called precision or personalized medicine, this field of medicine involves using an individual’s genes, lifestyle and environment to tailor treatment and prevention approaches that are unique to them.
Precision medicine has been around for quite a while (blood transfusions are an example of precision medicine), but the field is now set to enter a new era thanks to major advancements in technology and software.
Israeli tech company Bionaut Labs is currently developing micro-robots dubbed bionauts that could be instrumental in reaching and treating organs that would otherwise be impossible to reach. These bionauts are introduced into the cerebrospinal fluid from the back of the skull or the spine before being precision guided to hard-to-reach organs for treatment.
Bionaut Labs cofounder and CEO Michael Shpigelmacher says he was spurred to form a company that would aid in the treatment of hard-to-treat and even incurable medical conditions after losing both his mother and mother-in-law to cancer. He teamed up with entrepreneurs Alex Shpunt and Aviad Maizels to form Bionaut Labs in 2017, and the three soon become the most successful tech entrepreneurs in Israel after they developed face identification technology and sold it to Apple for $360 million.
Now, said Shpigelmacher in a public statement, the company is looking to develop something that will have an “even bigger” impact and save human lives.
Shpigelmacher has years of experience working with U.S.-based medical equipment producer Mackenzie Group. He says that one of his key takeaways from his time with the company is that the development of new technology tends to take too long. This means that it can take quite a while for investors to get a return on their investment, making the medical technology field less attractive to investors and depriving them of much-needed capital.
Patients are the ones who suffer the most because this leaves medical tech development to academia and the government, which can take several decades.
Bionaut Labs’ cofounders first invested their own money to speed up their research, and they have raised more than $63 million so far. After working with a pharmaceutical firm, Shpigelmacher discovered that medications designed for specific regions of the body often proliferated through the circulatory system, reducing their effectiveness and causing side effects.
Bionaut Labs first focused on bypassing the blood-brain barrier and reaching the brain to improve the treatment outcomes for conditions such as stroke, brain cancer, Parkinson’s and epilepsy. Shpigelmacher says Bionaut Labs is about a year away from running clinical trials to test the viability of using its microrobots as surgical tools in people with a brain condition called Dandy-Walker syndrome.
After that, Shpigelmacher says the company will carry out another clinical trial testing the medication delivery capabilities of their microrobots in people with glioblastoma.
Bionaut Labs joins a growing list of enterprises such as CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) that are investing in finding better ways to manage cancer, and especially brain cancers. As their work yields positive results, patients will have viable alternatives to the current treatments whose outcomes haven’t been satisfactory for many.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to CNS Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: CNSP) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/CNSP
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