By analyzing patients’ reactions to treatment, Oncohost Ltd.’s proteomics-based platform enables earlier prediction of paradoxical responses to immunotherapy that promote tumor growth in certain cancers. The artificial intelligence-powered host response profiling platform, called Prophet, could help identify the best combination of therapies and minimize adverse effects from treatments that are unlikely to be beneficial.

Butterfly Medical Ltd. could be on the verge of metamorphosis into a major player in the benign prostatic hyperplasia treatment field. The Yokneam, Israel-based company just raised $7 million in a series B financing led by New Rhein Healthcare Investors LLC, of Philadelphia.

HONG KONG – Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) has set up a company to further develop and commercialize its technology into a wearable device for predicting epilepsy-related seizures.

Israeli startup Olive Diagnostics Pvt. Ltd. is aiming to disrupt at-home urinalysis testing with a hands-free, noninvasive, artificial intelligence (AI)-based solution that provides remote diagnostics by detecting urine’s molecular composition. K2, as the device is called, attaches easily to the toilet rim to generate secure, personalized diagnostic data that directly links to a mobile app.

Israeli startup Envizion Medical Ltd. said it is partnering with one of the largest private U.S. hospital chains to deploy its electromagnetic fields-guided feeding tube placement navigation technology in 150 hospitals nationwide. The company received U.S. FDA 510(k) clearance for the Envue navigation device and Envizion feeding tubes in April 2019.

Vessi Medical Ltd. has scooped up $1.7 million in series A funding to move forward with a first-in-human study of its minimally invasive bladder cancer device. The trial is set to launch in the first quarter of 2021. Leading the funding round are the Trendlines Group Ltd. and Agriline Ltd. The Trendlines Group already counts Misgav, Israel-based Vessi Medical as part of its portfolio of medical startups.

Pooled testing was hailed early in the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to quickly and efficiently increase the number of people tested for the virus. But the approach has fallen short of its promise for a variety of reasons, from supply and labor shortages to high community infection rates. Now, a new testing method – recently approved for use by laboratories in Israel – could help chip away at some of those issues.

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) presented a new artificial intelligence technique that could protect medical imaging systems from hacking and human errors at the 2020 International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME) on Aug. 26. Their innovative solution uses a dual-layer architecture that screens for two different types of anomalous instructions to capture those that are always unusual or outside of safe ranges and those that are inappropriate in the specific context.

HONG KONG – Following FDA approval of its IND, Israel-based Kahr Medical Ltd. is set to start a phase I/II trial of lead product DSP-107, a second-generation CD47- and 41BB-targeting compound. The move puts Kahr among a number of companies working on drugs against checkpoint molecule CD47.

Sight Diagnostics Ltd. raised $71 million in series D financing to expand its commercial operations and increase research and development efforts into disease detection from its fingerprick blood analyzer Sight OLO.