There isn't a country in the world today whose science and technology is unknown to Western man. Science, more than almost any other field, is global, cooperative. If you're dreaming of a place where people enjoy dietetic chocolate every day, or a remedy for colds that really does work, you might as well look in outer space.
But it wasn't like this in the past, and at the beginning of the decade, a team of private Israeli investors decided to invade the former Soviet Union, and find useful technologies that were accepted in local science - ones that had not yet penetrated the West or become popular there. The group travelled the length and breadth of the Soviet Union, visiting research institutes (just like visitors from overseas sometimes trawl scientific institutes in Israel), and returned to Israel with a number of interesting ideas, some of which formed the basis for medical device company Medical Quant Ltd..
Medical Quant's shareholders include managing director Chanan Gal-Gotlieb, and Professor Apostilo Sapiro. The company's products are marketed by I Cure.
During the course of their trips to research institutes across Russia and the CIS, the partners happened to read a newspaper article that described a product for the relief of pain and inflammation that had been developed by scientists at the Russian space agency to treat wounds sustained in outer space. The device the agency had developed was a combination of a laser, RF waves, and magnetic fields which had been combined to reduce inflammation and levels and pain.
"The laser beam, or visible light, stimulates a cell component called mitochondria to produce more of a substance called ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which is the cell's primary energy source," explains Gal-Gotlieb. "An increase in levels of this substance encourages all the live processes within the cell - including blood flow and waste removal. So the process of relieving the area of inflammation is speeded up." Cold laser (low-power laser) has already become established in the West as a treatment for pain and inflammation, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considers cold laser as an experimental treatment for pain, and allows products like these to be used in trials.
Medical Quant's product includes not only a laser but also a combination of a number of types of beams which, the company says, work together to achieve an effect that is superior to that of any one of the technologies alone. "We conducted a survey at Bar Ilan University in which we found that integrating the technologies increased the rate of healing by 21%, against 3% for each of the technologies individually," says Gal-Gotlieb. The company has filed an application for a patent on the technology combination, which is still pending.
Globes: Doesn't the prolonged use of laser light carry a risk of cancer?
Gal-Gotlieb:"Ultraviolet light does not form part of the frequency range we use, so there is no danger at all."
Medical Quant's investors say that they have invested $1.5 million so far in upgrading the technology. The money was spent, among other things, on a clinical trial in the US encompassing 120 people.
FDA approval for home use
Although the application was filed without a precise description of its mechanism attached, the FDA approved the product for marketing in 2005, and Medical Quant was even permitted to write on the packaging, "effective in pain relief." A more expensive and complex version of the product, TerraQuant, was launched the same year. Over time, the company's managers saw that they were finding it difficult to compete in the market for treatment at medical institutes. "The market already has expensive laser devices for treating pain and inflammation," explains Gal-Gotlieb. "We demonstrated our capabilities to doctors, but we frequently found ourselves up against a wall of ego. Every doctor said, 'my healing rates are fast anyway. Patients don't suffer as much as you think,' although we know the average data. We realized that our advantage would be in the home treatment market."
Because Medical Quant's product is based on cold laser, meaning very low-level laser, it does not carry any risk and is suitable for self-use. Since 2005, the company has been working to adapt the product and its ease of use to this strategy, and it now has an FDA-approved product for the home market. It claims that this is the first product to gain such approval.
"We began marketing the products to physiotherapists in the US, and we reached $1.5 million sales a year," says Adv. Gilad Segev, one of the owners of Medical Quant's product distributor, I Cure. "Six months ago, we began selling the home-use product, which is available at any pharmacist without a prescription." The product is sold in the US at pharmacies and through shopping channels and catalogues. Medical Quant recently began sales to the Russian and Israeli markets as well, and is currently in talks on a distribution agreement to pharmacies in Germany.
The product still doesn't have health insurance cover, but it sells for €399 in Europe, and slightly more in the US. "Insurance cover improves sales, but it isn't essential at present, since we believe that anyone who really needs the product, for instance someone who suffers from chronic pain, can pay for it out of his own money," say the company managers. Medical Quant is hoping to raise a further $5 million in the near future, to enable it to qualify for health insurance cover and expand into additional markets.
As one would expect of a product for home use, Medical Quant is marketing its device for a range of indications: arthritis, wrist tendonitis caused by prolonged work at a computer terminal, or other inflammations. The company also intends to market it as a product for the treatment of chronic wounds, also triggered by inflammation mechanisms.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 24, 2008
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