A Medical Device Daily
Kenes Exhibitions and Israel Life Sciences Industry (ILSI), the organizing bodies of the ILSI-Biomed Israel Conference, which they describe as "Israel's premier life sciences event," reported that the first-ever conference in Israel on personalized medicine will take place on June 17 at the Dan Panorama Hotel in Tel-Aviv.
The conference is being held as part of the ILSI-Biomed 2009 Conference, and is being organized by the economic attaché of the Italian Embassy in Tel-Aviv, the Israel-Italy Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Italian Trade Commission under the bi-national science and industry agreement between Israel and Italy.
The organizers noted that a recent Forbes article highlighted the fact that with the Obama administration's focus on scientific research spending, programs dedicated to advancing genomics and personalized medicine will flourish. According to the story, "no area is better positioned to benefit than genomics and personalized medicine. With knowledge of an individual's genetic makeup, doctors will prescribe drugs with far better understanding of their efficacy for that particular individual."
The conference will focus on the growing needs for a national medical system that can provide personal access by using technological solutions from pharmacogenomics to systems for medical information.
Well-known researchers from diverse fields of personalized medicine from Israel and Italy will participate in the conference, including companies from the Lombardia and Piamonte districts, representatives of multinational companies such as Bracco and Diasorin, research institutions Centro Diagnostico Italiano in San Raffaele and BioIndustry Park Canavese in Piamonte district and institutional organizations representing the Italian medical system.
The conference will be opened by Uzia Galil, founder of Elron and chairman of the board of directors of Elbit Systems. Israeli companies such as Maccabi, IBM Israel and Micro Medic also will participate.
"We believe that this is a unique opportunity to show the strength of Israeli innovations in the personalized medical field and for us to explore the advantages of cooperation with Italian companies and academic centers that can serve as a bridge to markets around the world," said Dr. Simon Buty, vice chairman of Israel-Italy Chamber of Commerce and Industry and VP of R&D for Rad-Biomed.
The ILSI-Biomed Conference is a joint venture between ILSI and Kenes International. ILSI is composed of medical device, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical service companies, universities and private research institutions, and industry service providers aiming to research, develop and advocate policies and actions that promote biomedical science, biotechnology and medical device innovation in Israel.
ILSI Israel 2009 will take place June 15-17 at David Intercontinental and Dan Panorama Hotels in Tel-Aviv.
Fertility centers open in Colombia
INVO Bioscience (Beverly, Massachusetts), a company focused on treatment options for patients diagnosed with infertility, reported that the first South American INVO Center has opened in Cali, Colombia, and six existing In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) centers located in Armenia, C cuta, Bogot ; Ibagué, Medellin and Ubate, Colombia, are also now offering the INVO procedure.
INVO Bioscience's product, the INVOcell, allows for vaginal incubation of eggs, sperm and early embryo development during the infertility treatment process.
The INVO Center of Cali in Colombia, located at the clinic of Farallones, is the first standalone INVO center opened in South America. Six IVF centers that have elected to start offering the INVOcell procedure were all introduced at an infertility conference with specialists in infertility from Central and South America in attendance.
"The opening of the INVO Center of Cali, along with the introduction of the INVO procedure at six IVF centers in Colombia, is a major step forward in our goal of offering INVO in countries around the world as a simpler and more affordable solution to address infertility," said INVO Bioscience CEO Kathleen Karloff. "We are [pleased] by the positive attention and responses we've already received from the South American medical community."
INVO Bioscience also announced plans to work with infertility specialists in Panama, Guatemala, San Salvador, Mexico and Peru to offer the INVOcell procedure in the near future.
Researchers discover new virus
Roche Applied Sciences (Branford, Connecticut) said that a study published online in PLoS Pathogens reports that researchers at Columbia University (New York), the South African National Health Laboratory Services, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta), and 454 Life Sciences (also Branford, Connecticut) have discovered a new virus that is responsible for a highly fatal hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Zambia and South Africa late in 2008.
The previously unknown arenavirus, which is distantly related to the Lassa virus and Lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, was characterized using the rapid and sensitive sequencing technology of 454 Life Sciences.
The high-throughput 454 Sequencing System, designed by Roche Applied Sciences, has been shown to be a powerful pathogen discovery tool in a series of recent studies. 454 Life Sciences makes the 454 Sequencing System for ultra-high-throughput DNA sequencing.