September 29th 2021
Reading time: 2 mins.
Innovation on Location: Digital Health
Led by Start-Up Nation Central, Jerusalem: Where Tech Meets Design presents Innovation on Location, a series of videos showcasing Jerusalem-based startups and unique local venues. This episode focuses on Digital Health, highlighting startup Genetika+ and venue BioGiv.
Startup: Genetika+
Genetika+ is developing a personalized medical testing tool to better treat depression by helping physicians find the best drug therapy for their patients. The Genetika+ test helps predict the best drug treatment for each patient, enabling faster treatment, fewer side effects, and lower dosing. The company’s platform assists pharmaceutical companies in their drug development pipeline by providing robust and highly specific drug response predictions from a broad group of patients. It includes a fully profiled and replenishable model for major depression, allowing a rapid high-throughput identification of novel drugs and their molecular effects on cells. It also allows the identification of patient subsets for clinical trials, obviating the need for larger clinical trials and increasing the potential for successful outcomes.
Talia Cohen Solal, PhD – Co-Founder and CEO
Talia Cohen Solal is the CEO and co-founder of Genetika+, a company developing new tools to personalize treatment for patient suffering from Major Depression. Talia Cohen Solal is a Neuroscientist who received her BA/MA in Neuroscience from Oxford University, a PhD from University College London working on the mechanisms of schizophrenia, and a fellowship at Columbia University developing novel tools for mental illness. She then led the scientific strategy as Principle Scientist at Pairnomix in Minneapolis, a White-House Endorsed early-stage company developing personalized medicine tools for rare-genetic diseases. Through her career she has won numerous awards for her academic work including 5 in the past year for Genetika+, 8 grants totaling $1.5 Million in academic funding, published 10 academic papers and filed 3 patents all in the field of Neuroscience.
Venue: BioGiv
BioGiv is an excubator infrastructure center, intended to share the vast scientific know-how and equipment of the Hebrew University with early-stage biotech and bio-med companies, in order to support the development of new technologies and strengthen the biotech sector in Israel. BioGiv offers a designated lab space, as well as access to shared equipment and tissue culture facilities, research service centers and experts – all operating in an IP-free zone. BioGiv’s core facilities personnel are available to train biotech researchers in operating specialized equipment and implementing research methodologies in standard operating procedures (SOP).
Tsafi Danieli, PhD – Founder & Director
Dr. Tsafi Danieli founded BioGiv Excubator in 2014, and has been its director since 2017. She is also the head of Hebrew University’s Protein Expression Core Facility, a biotechnology research and training center specializing in molecular biology and protein production. Dr. Danieli has extensive experience in consulting and collaborating with pharma and biotech companies, development of novel protein production platforms for recombinant proteins, and teaching both international and academic workshops and courses. She holds a PhD in molecular virology from Tel Aviv University in collaboration with the University of California at San-Francisco.
For a list of companies like Genetika+ working in the Digital Health sector, click here.
Click here for a list of more Jerusalem-based companies on Start-Up Nation Central’s Finder.
Concept and Production: Brief.
Partners: Start-Up Nation Central, Scale Up Velocity, Jerusalem Foundation, The Jerusalem Development Authority, Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, Jerusalem Municipality
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