Top 5 Israeli innovations of the past decade

The Start-up Nation has made several ground breaking discoveries in the fields of technology, science, and innovation during the past decade.The first artificial pancreas – A potential cure for diabetes?

In a possible future cure for diabetes, researchers at Betalin Therapeutics have engineered the first artificial pancreas. It can be inserted underneath the skin, without anesthesia and “reprograms” the natural pancreas to function correctly, by teaching it how to properly administer insulin. The pancreas, which is located in the abdomen, is a vital organ crucial to the digestive process. In diabetic patients, it doesn’t produce enough insulin, causing the amount of sugars to increase in the bloodstream, and leading to symptoms such as nausea and shortness of breath.

Betalin’s ground-breaking bio-artificial pancreas was engineered using pig lung tissue and cells secreted by insulin. It can identify a patient’s blood sugar level and accurately dispense the required amount of insulin as needed, rendering all future injections, drugs or blood glucose measures obsolete.

“We are mimicking what actually happens in the body,” Dr. Nikolai Kunicher, CEO of Betalin Therapeutics previously told Israel Hayom.