Israeli Medical Startup Develops a Way to Personalize Mental Health Treatment
There is new hope for people who suffer from clinical depression and while there have been great advances in medication, not all work for everyone. Depression treatment has come a long way, but it is still based on a trial-and-error approach.
An Israeli startup, NeuroKaire, has found a revolutionary approach to the treatment of depression, reported I24 News. A blood test can now evaluate how a patient’s brain will respond to different anti-depressants without having to take them.
More than 300 million people are living with depression globally and two-thirds of them do not respond to the first anti-depressant they try. That’s why this new breakthrough is so important, especially in Israel, where three years of war has taken its toll and made the need for effective mental health treatments even more pressing, according to The Times of Israel.
An Long Journey
NeuroKaire’s blood test was created by Dr. Talia Cohen Solal and Dr. Daphna Laifenfeld The two neuroscientists met when Cohen Solal immigrated from the US to Israel in 2017 and in 2018 they joined forces to found NeuroKaire.
They began working at the Biogov lab compound for startups that is located at Hebrew University. There they developed a test based on a model known as brain in a dish where stem cell technology turns the patient’s stem cells into frontal brain neurons. This is the region that is most affected by mental illness including depression.
“Depression is reduced connectivity in the brain, often expressed in a lack of motivation,” Cohen Solal told The Times of Israel. “With our brain in a dish platform, we have a window into the brain and can analyze how well those neurons are connecting or communicating after exposure to antidepressants, and we turn that into a quantitative readout for how strongly a drug has affected connectivity in those samples.”
The brain in a dish model can test 70 different antidepressants to pinpoint the most effective drug or drug combo that provides the most effective personalized therapy.
“Typically, the guessing game of identifying the right drug for a patient with clinical depression can take between 12 to 18 months. We are bringing that down to two months,” Cohen Solal said.
Going Forward?
Clinical trials were conducted in Israel at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan and Geha Mental Health Center in Petah Tikva as well as in the US at the Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia in collaboration with the National Institute of Mental Health.
The startup expanded to the US in 2023 and opened a commercial lab, but the R&D center is based in Tel Aviv.
Following regulatory approval, the BrightKaire test is available to be used on patients in Israel and the US. While it is expensive, the test is covered by some private companies including Medicare Part B. “We have around 100 active prescribing psychiatrists at present,” said Cohen Solal.
But depression is just the beginning; the next step is to recruit people suffering from PTSD and to test for other neurological conditions like ADHD. The potential uses will make a huge differance in peoples’ lives.
