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<\/a><\/p>\nDr. Shai Melcer. (Maayan Hoffman\/The Media Line)<\/p>\n
\u200bMelcer spoke to The Media Line during a foreign press briefing at the Israel Innovation Authority\u2019s offices in Tel Aviv earlier this week. He noted that the cancers Spot It Early focuses on are often diagnosed too late for full recovery.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u201cBeagles have been known to sense many, many, many different compounds. You sometimes see them running around big places like airports. They\u2019re trying to find drugs. They\u2019re trying to find explosives. Those are just volatile compounds that are very small in volume. It\u2019s the same in cancer,\u201d Melcer said.<\/p>\n
\u200bHe added that the Health Ministry is assisting with the clinical trial design and that the American Food and Drug Administration is closely following the results.<\/p>\n
You have biology, you use it. You have engineering, you use it. You have computation, you use it. You take the best of the best, combine them, and you save many people\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u201cHow well these trials are being conducted and what the results are will change the way cancer is being detected worldwide,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have biology, you use it. You have engineering, you use it. You have computation, you use it. You take the best of the best, combine them, and you save many people\u2019s lives. It is really that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u200bExcept that it is not simple at all.<\/p>\n
\u200bThe work is part of Israel\u2019s national bio-convergence initiative, a concept coined decades ago but formally embraced within Israeli innovation only in 2024, when Melcer was appointed to lead the program. Since then, bio-convergence has become central to much of the research funded by the authority, driven not only by a 10-year government commitment but also by its relevance across industries, from healthcare and the environment to food and agriculture.<\/p>\n
\u200bIn Israel, high tech is considered the country\u2019s largest export sector. Despite more than two years of war, 2025 marked the industry\u2019s strongest financial year ever for money flowing into the economy through high-tech deals. Total deal volume surpassed $111 billion, driven by major transactions such as Google\u2019s acquisition of Wiz and Palo Alto Networks\u2019 purchase of CyberArk.<\/p>\n
\u200bBeyond headline-grabbing deals, Israel is also home to a large concentration of international companies that have established research and development centers there, including Microsoft and Facebook. They did so, Melcer said, \u201cfor very good reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u200b\u201cWe do things swiftly. We do them efficiently. For many years, we did them relatively cheaply. We don\u2019t do them as cheaply as we used to, but we\u2019re still very much getting the job done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u200bYet another factor that sets Israel apart and directly feeds into the bio-convergence program is its academic ecosystem.<\/p>\n
We do things swiftly. We do them efficiently. For many years, we did them relatively cheaply. We don\u2019t do them as cheaply as we used to, but we\u2019re still very much getting the job done.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u201cThe number of companies, the number of entrepreneurs, the number of unicorns that come, and the money raised from IP generated in Israeli academia is way, way up,\u201d Melcer said. \u201cSo when you look at what we call the zero point axis, where things start, this is where the magic begins. So the excellent research, the excellent development, actually comes from science-based research.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u200bMelcer noted that roughly a quarter of Israel\u2019s PhD graduates are in biology-related fields, totaling about 500 each year. On a per capita basis, Israel is a global leader in the number of trained biologists. Today, however, only about one-third of them enter the industry, while the rest become what he described as \u201cunderutilized assets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u200bOne of the core goals of the bio-convergence program is to change that trajectory.<\/p>\n
\u200bThe economic potential is significant. Research released by the McKinsey Global Institute in 2020 found that biology-based innovations are expected to generate between $2 trillion and $4 trillion in direct economic impact between 2030 and 2040.<\/p>\n
\u200bAbout five years ago, Israel\u2019s Health Ministry began recognizing the shift underway and began reviewing its regulatory framework to ensure it was neither overly restrictive nor overly permissive.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u201cThe regulatory framework needs to be as good and as strict as other regulatory frameworks throughout the world, so that you\u2019re on par with global regulators, but you have to have an environment that allows for innovators to move forward within those restrictions,\u201d Melcer said.<\/p>\n
\u200bHe explained that the ministry, once largely inward-focused, is now far more attuned to the needs of the high-tech, biotech, and food-tech sectors. It is working more proactively with the US Food and Drug Administration, European regulators, and others to align standards and coordinate regulatory efforts across borders.<\/p>\n
\u200bIf the FDA approves a product, the Health Ministry will review it and is likely to approve it for use in Israel as well. Increasingly, however, the process works in both directions. The ministry is now taking cues from international regulators to ensure that Israeli clinical trial designs meet global endpoints. If those endpoints are reached, Melcer said, the FDA may accept the trial data as sufficient for its own approval process.<\/p>\n
\u200bSimilar efforts, he added, are taking place within Israel\u2019s patent system.<\/p>\n
\u200bIn recent years, Israel has already seen striking examples of regulatory innovation, including authorization for the sale of the world\u2019s first cultured milk product and, shortly afterward, cultured beef.<\/p>\n
\u200bMelcer pointed to additional examples of bio-convergence at work, including an Israeli company developing self-restorative concrete and another working on self-repairing glass that incorporates proteins into the material, allowing it to heal itself if it breaks.<\/p>\n
\u200bPerhaps one of the most recognizable bio-convergence examples in Israel, however, is Precise Bio, a company specializing in 3D bioprinting human tissue.<\/p>\n
\u200bPrecise Bio was the first company in the world to 3D print a cornea. Three months ago, Israel became the first country in the world to transplant that cornea into a patient at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa.<\/p>\n
\u200bThe challenge, Melcer explained, is producing tissue at clinical-grade levels. In the case of corneal transplants, the potential impact is significant. Traditional cornea donations operate on a one-to-one ratio, with each donated cornea helping a single patient. Precise Bio, by contrast, takes donor corneas, isolates the endothelial cells, expands them through growth, and prints them onto specially designed polymers optimized for optics, structure, and durability.<\/p>\n
That process could increase the ratio from one donor to anywhere between four and 500 recipients. As a result, waiting lists could shrink dramatically, and fewer patients would lose their sight while waiting for a transplant. In addition, Melcer said, the resulting cornea may actually be superior to a traditional transplant.<\/p>\n
\u200bSo what comes next?<\/p>\n
\u200bMelcer said the company is now working toward printing a cardiac patch.<\/p>\n
\u200bScar tissue, he explained, is a significant challenge in cardiology. Not only does it fail to heal correctly, but it can also cause further damage to the heart. A regenerative patch placed over scar tissue could help strengthen the heart and speed recovery.<\/p>\n
\u200b\u201cWhere do you get tissue to patch over a heart?\u201d Melcer asked. Unlike skin grafts, he said, cardiac tissue cannot simply be borrowed from another part of the body. Precise Bio is exploring a solution for 3D-printed heart patches, potentially using cells taken directly from the patient. Those cells could be reprogrammed, grown in a lab, and printed into a patch explicitly tailored to that individual. Once implanted, the patch would integrate with the heart, allowing patients to recover more quickly and return to everyday life sooner than would otherwise be possible.<\/p>\n
\u200bIt is a vision that captures the promise of bio-convergence itself: biology, engineering, and computation working together, not as theory, but as medicine already moving from the lab into the clinic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Research released by the McKinsey Global Institute in 2020 found that biology-based innovations are expected to generate between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-276281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}