Innovative implantable bio-artificial pancreas for the treatment of diabetes patients

No More Frequent Glucose Monitoring & Insulin Injections

Beta-O2 is Proposing a Life-Changing Benefit to Diabetes Patients

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Board

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Scientific Advisory Board

Professor Clark Colton, Ph.D.

Professor Colton is a professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT. His research spans many areas of bioengineering and currently includes methods to improve islet transplantation and targeted drug delivery. He has an unparalleled knowledge of how oxygen is consumed by islets and is regarded as a pioneer in the research of oxygen supply to islets. Working with a multidisciplinary team, he led research on developing technology for improving diabetes treatment including glucose sensors and biohybrid artificial pancreas devices. Professor Colton has been recognized for his achievements in tissue engineering and biofiltration with several honors, including the Lifetime Contribution Award in Bioartificial Organs from the Engineering Foundation. He is the author of numerous scientific papers on therapeutic systems incorporating both synthetic polymers and living tissue. Professor Colton is a former Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is also the recipient of many prestigious awards including the Gambro AB Award, International Society of Blood Purification (1986), the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award, American Society for Engineering Education (1980), the Allan P. Colburn Award, American Institute of Chemical Engineers (1977 ) and the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award (1972). Professor Colton earned his B.Ch.E from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from MIT.

Professor Gordon C. Weir, M.D.

Professor Gordon Weir holds the Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation Chair at the Joslin Diabetes Center. He is an investigator at the Center and serves as the section head of the Center’s Islet Transplantation and Cell Biology Department. Professor Weir is also a of medicine at Harvard Medical School. The main goal of the Section on Islet Transplantation and cell Biology is to make available islet transplantation as a treatment for diabetes. Professor Weir’s team focuses on several areas. These include the potential of transplanting animal islets into humans to restore insulin production in people with diabetes; understanding how islet cells grow, differentiate and die, the molecular mechanisms by which beta cells make insulin, and the problems that beta cells face when confronted with high glucose levels in diabetes; and at a basic level, investigating the phenotype and function of pancreatic beta cells in the in vivo environment, whether they be in models of diabetes such as rats with partial pancreatectomy or glucose infusions, or with transplanted islets placed into a site such under the kidney capsule or in alginate beads transplanted into the peritoneal cavity. Recent work has focused upon assessment of transplanted human islets, and the development of immature porcine islet tissue and various other precursor/stem cells when transplanted. Professor Weir completed his medical degree at Harvard Medical School and his residency training at University Hospital in Cleveland, OH. His training in endocrinology was obtained at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Before joining the Joslin Diabetes Center first as its medical director, Professor Weir was a Professor of medicine at the Medical College of Virginia. Professor Weir is the recipient of numerous honors and has served on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals, including the American Journal of Physiology and the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology, Metabolism and Transplantation. He was recently Editor-in-chief of the journal Diabetes.

Founders

Pnina Vardi, M.D., Scientific Advisory Board Chair and Founder

Dr. Vardi is the director of the Department of Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes for Clalit Health Services in Haifa, Israel and the Western Galilee, Israel. She is also the Director of the Laboratory for the Research of Diabetes and Obesity at Felsenstein Medical Research Centre at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Vardi’s research is focused on Type I diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes in children and the engineering of a bio artificial pancreas for future pancreatic islets transplantation in diabetic patients. She is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University on the topics of diabetes, autoimmunity, genetics of Type I diabetes, as well as prediction and prevention of Type I diabetes and islet transplantation. She has published many scientific articles and is a reviewer for many scientific professional journals and research foundations. Her research is founded by national and international research foundation including the Israeli Ministry of Health and Science, the binational Israel-USA (BSF), NIH, and the common European market. Dr. Vardi has served as a member of many prestigious committees including the Executive Committee of International Diabetes Immunology Group and the World Health Organization Committee on Classification of Diabetes and its Complications (representative of world childhood diabetes). Dr. Vardi is the former director of the National Center for Childhood Diabetes Center at Schneider’s Children Medical Center in Petach Tikva, Israel. She is a board certified general pediatrician, endocrinologist and pediatric endocrinologist. She earned her medical degree from the Faculty of Medicine at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. She also studied at the Faculty of Medicine at Universita Degli Studi Firenze in Italy. In addition, Dr. Vardi was an Adler Fellow in diabetes research at the Harvard Medical School-Joslin Diabetes Center. In 2005, Dr. Vardi was nominated by the Israeli Industrial Center for Innovative Technology as a laureate scientist for the “Millennium Technology Award 2005.

Konstantin Bloch, Ph.D., Founder

Dr. Bloch is the scientific founder of the company. He graduated from the Kharkov State University and received his Ph.D. from the Russian Academy of Science in Moscow, the former Soviet Union. In 1992 he immigrated to Israel. Dr. Bloch is currently the head of the research team at the Diabetes and Obesity Research Laboratory, at Felsenstein Medical Research Center. He is also a senior scientist on the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel-Aviv University in Israel. His research group made a significant contribution towards engineering of glucose-sensitive insulin-producing cells with improved defense properties, as well as development of bio-hybrid artificial pancreas for cell therapy of diabetes. Dr. Bloch is author of numerous scientific publications in peer reviewed journals and is on the peer review committee of leading journals in field of tissue engineering, as well as being a member of several biomedical scientific societies.

Yossi Gross, M.Sc.

Mr. Gross is a leader in the medical devices arena in Israel. He is a veteran entrepreneur with extensive experience in creating and managing new and innovative medical device companies. Mr. Gross is actively involved in each initiative from the research and development stage through commercialization. Mr. Gross has founded or co-founded 14 successful medical device companies including Beta-O2, VisionCare, BioControl, Brainsgate, EarlySense, G.I. View, E-Pill, Transpharma and Elan Medical Technology, Israel. He has filed more than 200 U.S. patents and sits on the board of directors of his start-up companies. Prior to the commencement of his entrepreneurial endeavors, Mr. Gross served as the V.P. of R&D at Elan Pharmaceutical, a multi-billion dollar company, publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Gross holds a degree in aeronautical engineering from the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa as well as a degree in electrical engineering and bioengineering.