256 innovations from Bar-Ilan University, available for licensing, co-investment, or spin-out through BIRAD.
Naveh Doron
Metal intercalated within the van der Waals gap of layered semiconductor compounds such as MoS2 resulting in a unique hybrid manifesting enhanced interactions with light and consequently result in photodetector devices with improved photoresponse. For example, copper-enhanced MoS2 photodiodes are superior in their spectral response, that extends into the infrared and also in their total responsivity that exceeds 104 A/W. The gain of such photodetectors is comparable with those of night vision enhancing devices.
Ilouz Ronit
The invention relates to a novel method and associated means for detecting and classifying prostate cancer based on an imbalance between the subunits of the enzyme Protein Kinase A (PKA) in MRI-targeted biopsy tissues. Based on experimental findings, we present an innovative biomarker system that enables precise distinction between benign tissue, low-grade (Grade Group 1), and high-grade (Grade Group 4 and above) lesions through spatial and quantitative measurement of the ratio between the regulatory subunit RIβ and the catalytic subunit PKA-C. The method is founded on the biochemical and spatial principle of structural integrity between PKA subunits. In healthy prostate tissue, RIβ and PKA-C co-localize along the basal cell layer, maintaining balanced holoenzyme architecture. In malignant lesions, however, RIβ is selectively lost while PKA-C becomes overexpressed and mislocalized within proliferating epithelial tumor cells. To quantify these differences, the invention comprises: Quantitative Immunofluorescence Imaging (IF) – enabling automated measurement of fluorescence intensity for each marker (RIβ, PKA-C, and basal cell markers) using a dedicated image analysis algorithm. Expression Ratio Analysis – computation of the quantitative RIβ:PKA-C ratio in defined regions of interest (ROIs) within each biopsy section, serving as a biological indicator of holoenzyme balance or imbalance. Biochemical Validation via Western Blot – confirming that the observed decrease in RIβ and increase in PKA-C are reflected at the total protein level in the same MRI-targeted biopsy samples. Future Development of Quantitative Thresholds and Decision Algorithms – the invention enables, in subsequent stages, the establishment of defined numerical thresholds for the RIβ:PKA-C ratio that may serve to automatically identify malignant or aggressive lesions and support diagnostic decision-making. By integrating spatial profiling with precise molecular quantification, the invention defines a unique biological signature that differentiates suspicious lesions from benign or indolent regions, independently of conventional histopathology. The invention further provides a basis for the development of a clinical diagnostic platform or laboratory kit designed to quantitatively assess PKA subunit imbalance in prostate biopsy specimens.
Naveh Doron
State-of-the-art methods for printing highly resolved pixels of two-dimensional (2D) materials on technologically important substrates typically involve multiple and time-consuming processing steps which increase device fabrication complexity and the risk of impurity contamination. This work introduces an alternative printing approach based on the Laser Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) technique for the successful digital transfer of graphene, MoS2 hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and, Bi2Se(3-x)Sx. Using LIFT, graphene pixels of 30 μm x 30 μm, MoS2 and Bi2Se3 flakes are transferred on SiO2/Si and flexible polymer substrates. The potential of upscaling this novel approach by reaching sizes of up to 300 μm x 300 μm for transferred graphene patches is also demonstrated. The transferred 2D materials are employed for the fabrication of devices including flexible touch sensors and Field-Effect-Transistors. By repeating the printing process also heterostructures of 2D materials can be developed.
Naveh Doron
A method that includes all the fabrication process for making a multilayer printed circuit board when a CVD grown copper-graphene is in presence in the circuit. The method describes the ways to do the fabrication and keeping the graphene intact.
Naveh Doron
The invention includes the integration of multi-layer graphene inside printed cards (PCB) and is designed to help with the solution of power dissipation problems, emitted as heat to the environment . the dissipated heat damage the function of the card and creates a waste of energy. multi-layer graphene known as high thermal conductivity value material (calculated and measured), but has not been integrated into cards or motherboards to date so far.
Cohen Haim
This invention relates to a method for diagnosing Covid-19 virus in biological samples. Specifically, this invention relates to a method for detecting SARS-CoV2 viral RNA using a fluorescently labeled complementary DNA probe according to a phenomenon known as Microscale Thermophoresis (MST). MST is a physical phenomenon where biomolecules migrate differently along a temperature gradient according to properties such as size, hydration shell and charge. These different migration patterns resulting in a separation along the gradient which can be quantified for scientific studies. Since binding events are predicted to affect thermophoretic migration, MST is used to detect biological interactions such as protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions with high accuracy and low sample consumption. In a typical MST measurement an infra-red laser (I.R) is used to create the temperature gradient for a limited time and one of the binding partners is fluorescently labeled and being monitored during the total time of the experiment. The ratio between the florescence signal before and during the temperature gradient is calculated and represents the thermophoretic migration. The present invention is directed to utilize this phenomenon, prior MST measurement RNA is extracted from a biological sample using guanidinium thiocyanate phenol-chloroform extraction technique. Then, under strict conditions to ensure maximum specificity it is allowed to hybridize with a fluorescently labeled SARS-CoV2 DNA probe. If the viral RNA is present in the sample, a RNA:DNA hybrid is formed and the difference between the thermophoretic migration of a free probe and the hybrid is measured using an MST instrument. For more details and proof of concept’ please see figure 1-4. The method of this invention allows a detection time of 3 seconds for 1 sample, meaning a theoretical capacity up to 58,000 samples per day for 1 MST instrument (depends on the model in used). The invention is also further applicable for the diagnosis of other viruses and bacteria.
Sol Efroni
The invention is a computational framework that predicts a subject's biological age and immunological state directly from the sequence composition of their T-cell receptor (TCR) β-chain repertoire. It combines two complementary feature representations - age-associated clonotype abundances and CDR3 amino-acid 3-mer frequencies - which are processed through an ensemble of gradient-boosted trees for feature selection and a deep multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network for regression. A novel signed-Wasserstein distance scoring method identifies individual TCR clonotypes statistically biased toward younger or older donors, creating an interpretable molecular 'aging vocabulary' that feeds the predictive model. The system achieves robust cross-cohort age prediction (MAE ≈ 6–7.5 years, R² ≈ 0.67–0.78) and reveals a reproducible ~1.5-year sex-related immunological offset, with the capacity to reconstruct a subject's history of viral exposures from the TCR repertoire alone.
Polat Uri
Network activity within the brain in the gamma frequency (30–100Hz) plays an important role in information transfer across connected brain regions and across cortical hemispheres. Such oscillatory activity brings multimodal inputs together in a target region for efficient spatio-temporal integration. The gamma-frequency oscillation was shown to slow down lose power in mouse model of Alzheimer’s Disease. Transcranial alternating current stimulation projecting Gamma waves was shown to positively affect the long-lasting enhancement of synaptic transmission in mice models of Alzheimer’s Disease. In the invention a new method is provided for increasing a user’s cognitive ability/abilities, the method comprising presenting to the user one or more visual training-tasks, via processor implemented method steps of displaying, at least one session (S1, S2…), each session of KS visual training-tasks, requiring the user’s one or more responses; whereby the visual training-tasks are configured to induce a long-term amplification of the brain’s frequency power, in reaction to at least the provided visual training-tasks, thereby increasing at least one of the user’s cognitive abilities.
Knisbacher Binyamin
The invention presents methods for customizing chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) treatment through the use of a detailed biomarker panel and specific agents, based on the patient's biomarker profile. This method aims to match patients with treatments likely to be effective, according to various markers from distinct categories (e.g., gene expression, protein expression, mutations, clinical features, disease subtypes), aiming to improve treatment precision and outcomes in CLL management. The approach suggests a shift towards personalized treatment, leveraging molecular characteristics to inform therapeutic choices in oncology. The results are, at least in part, based on dynamic BH3 profiling experiments, which were used in a comprehensive drug screen that tested 42 different FDA approved drugs on samples taken from dozens of CLL patients.
Yissachar Nissan
The invention relates to the identification and use of a unique gut microbes configuration that inhibits tumor growth and enhances the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in metastatic melanoma patients. By utilizing specific gut bacterial strains with immunomodulatory properties - it is possible to predict clinical response prior to immunotherapy, enhance anti-tumor immune responses, overcome treatment resistance, and improve therapeutic outcomes in patients with resistant cancers. Specifically, the invention focuses on a defined consortium of bacterial strains identified through a series of experiments conducted in our laboratory (by analyzing intestinal responses to patients microbiota samples using our unique gut organ culture system). This microbial mix includes Barnesiella intestinihominis, Ruminococcus callidus, Ruminiclostridium siraeum, and additional strains predicted to induce pro-inflammatory immune responses that potentiate enhanced anti-tumor immunity. The invention further comprises a novel experimental pipeline for identifying beneficial gut bacterial strains from among the thousands found in patient microbiome samples, aimed at boosting immune system activity and improving the success of anti-cancer treatments.
Louzoun Yoram
The effect of microbes on their human host is often mediated through changes in metabolite concentrations. As such, multiple tools have been proposed to predict metabolitc profiles from microbial taxa frequencies, assuming a direct relation between the gut microbiome composition and blood metabolite concentrations. However, the microbiome-metabolite relation may depend on host demographics or condition. We show that the relation between microbiome and metabolites is best predicted at the log concentration level. We further develop LOCATE (Latent Of miCrobiome And meTabolites rElations), a machine learning (ML) tool based on latent representation which predicts the log normalized metabolites composition based on the log normalized microbiome composition. LOCATE has a higher overall accuracy than all current state-of-the-art predictors in both 16S rRNA gene and shotgun gene sequencing. The accuracy of LOCATE and all other predictors significantly decreases when predicting on one dataset and testing on a different dataset, or on a different condition in the same dataset, especially in 16S rRNA gene sequence based data. We propose an intermediate representation between the microbiome and the metabolite concentrations and show that this representation can be used to predict the host phenotype better than either the microbiome or the metabolome. This representation is strongly correlated with host demographics, including age, gender and diet and can be used to improve ML predictions of host phenotypes in comparison with either microbiome or metabolome using a large microbiome sample combined with a small number of metabolome samples (~ 50)
Gerber Doron
We have invented a microfluidic mechanism that allows us to take any ELISA/antibody based detection assay and improve its sensitivity 2-3 orders of magnitude. This means that we can work with very small samples or discover for example blood markers that are very scarce.
