ByJUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Updated:

Mice are most often used as animal models for medical research because they breed rapidly, and using them is not considered inhumane if they’re treated kindly; using monkeys, whose genome is closer to ours, is impossible.

However, especially in the realm of neurological and psychiatric disorders, traditional drug development methods are failing us. Animal models, particularly mice, very often fail to predict human outcomes accurately. About 3.4 billion people are affected by neurological and psychiatric disorders globally (43.1% of the global population), but the success rate in translating preclinical studies to clinical trials on people is only five percent.

New frontiers in science and medicine

So what can be done? A research team at an Israeli start-up in Tel Aviv named Itay and Beyond has developed a unique, innovative technology that creates brain organoids and a 3D “brain on a chip” that allows for testing and repurposing a wide variety of existing drugs to see if they would be effective – or help develop new drugs that could treat patients successfully.

They are working on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at the Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem, on epilepsy at the Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva, and at other medical centers in Israel.
A brain organoid is a tissue that is artificially grown in vitro, resembling parts of the human brain. It is created by culturing pluripotent stem cells into a three-dimensional culture that can be kept for years.

Since the brain is an incredibly complicated system of heterogeneous tissues and consists of a diverse array of neurons and glial cells, examining the brain and getting a grasp of how it functions is grueling, especially when it involves autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia, and other neurodegenerative and developmental diseases.

CEO of Itay & Beyond Dr. Nisim Perets
CEO of Itay & Beyond Dr. Nisim Perets (credit: DOR PAZUELO)


Dr. Nisim Perets, a translational science and tech-transfer specialist with a doctorate in neuroscience at Tel Aviv University and a post-doctorate at Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is co-founder and CEO of Itay and Beyond.


“Our innovative platform combines patient-derived brain organoids, advanced AI technology, and unparalleled functional readouts to break the deadlock in drug discovery,” Perets told The Jerusalem Post in an interview.


Itay and Beyond was founded by Shmulik Bezalel and is inspired by his 20-year-old son Itay, who has (ASD), Peretz recalled. “Recognizing the limited therapeutic options for neuropsychiatric disorders, I joined forces with Boaz Goldman to establish the company.


“Organoids are known, but not a brain chip; we are the first to do it. When I first heard of the idea of tissue organoids, I was amazed and moved. To do an examination outside the body, it was usually carried out on blood or various cells, Prof. Ariel Tenenbaum, chief of pediatrics at Hadassah, told the Post.


“We were chosen to work on a brain chip because Hadassah has an accelerator with companies that have innovative ideas. We put stress on autism, but my team and I are also involved in Down syndrome.”


A lot of places have put an organ on a microfluidic chip, but when the brain is involved, you have to look for the electronic coding mechanism. “We grew urine stem cells from patients and reprogrammed it to become a stem cell to restart it as brain tissue. Since 2023, we have a platform for ASD and other diseases and have two compounds that are already approved by authorities that could be beneficial, Tenenbaum continued.


Dr. Liya Kerem, a pediatrician and. endocrinologist with degrees in neurology and psychology, is working with him to find existing drugs that may treat autism. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder identified in children, usually around age two who have persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities.


Around one percent of the world’s population, or more than 75,000,000 people – children (one in 100) and adults – has ASD. It occurs four times more often in boys than girls. Genes and the environment are involved in its appearance. There are cases in which we know that there are ASD genes involved, which can even be identified in amniotic fluid in the womb.


Dr. Shirley Saar, director of the Innovation Center at Schneider, said: “We are pleased to support Itay and Beyond as part of our efforts to support all members of the Israeli pediatric technological community. Our mission is to bring personalized medicine to children through the development of drugs to transform today’s children into tomorrow’s healthy adults.”


Tenenbaum said clinical testing of existing drugs for ASD can even begin within 18 months if it already exists; it would take much longer to develop a new drug. “Pharma companies have already contacted us because they have a really big interest in brain chip technology.”