Israeli researchers discover Viagra may stop cancer from spreading | Innov'Nation

[music] Hello and welcome to Inov Nation. I'm your host Lin PL Meer and thank you for joining. First, our headlines. Now, it's a world's first. Israeli scientists have discovered that an active ingredient in Viagra may stop cancer from spreading. We speak to one of the researchers. And from Israel to a meager sum of only $7 billion, a three-year-old Israeli AI startup could be heading for a massive sale. and Elon Musk's SpaceX may want in. And China, already a global powerhouse in innovation, is now also turning its technology industry into a tourist hot spot. We will have the details. Now, we start with some groundbreaking news here from Israeli soil because scientists have discovered that an active ingredient in Viagra may help stop cancer from spreading. Siden Phil, the drug better known by its brand name Viagra, which as you know, of course, is used to treat erectile dysfunction, but it has also been investigated for a range of other conditions because of the way it affects blood flow. Now, in a world's first, Israeli researchers have discovered a completely different potential use for the drug, namely preventing cancer cells from spreading to other parts of the body. So, for more, it's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Sama Hayek, not to be confused with the famous actress Selma Hayek, of course, h but equally uh important in stature. So, thank you so much, Dr. Sama Hayek, for joining me today. H you're one of the leading researchers of this incredible discovery. So let's start with the headline. Viagra may stop uh cancer from spreading. Is this actually what your research has discovered? First, thank you for having me. Second, it's really important for me to explain that this unique study has bridges two scientific words. The first is the experimental research using cancer cells and mouse modeling which allowed our court colleagues from vitamin institute to investigate the biological mechanism and test whether PDEA inhibition restricts met metastasis. The second part is the epidemiological research study where we use real world data from clarit health services in Israel which is the largest HMO in Israel where we allow which allowed us to examine with the viatra was associated with better survival among patients with cancer. These two designs answer different but complimentary question. Now for your only question, our findings are really very promising but the answer requires a requires an important distinction. In the experimental component, Viagra restricted cancer cells migration and metastasis across mouse and the human cancer models. In the epidemiological component which I led, we analyzed real world clinical data and found significantly better survival among patients with cancer who had used Viagra six months before the cancer diagnosis and we found also that those response relationship of the benefit of using Viagra. Therefore, the experimental results de demonstrate an antimastic effect in research model while the human data which is the epidemiological study show a consistent survival ass association. Together they provide compelling evidence but the observational finding don't yet prove that Viagra prevent metastasis or improve survival in patients. Thus we need more clinical trial that that look and investigate this association. >> So how did you know where to look? Why did you look specifically into Viagra? >> So it's really important question what you are bringing here because the whole idea was originated from a biioinformatics analysis conducted by professor Ethan Robin and his research group. They found computational method to identify genes inhibit the that that might inhibit the a cancer progression. And one of the genes that they looked at was the PDE5A what really important and it it it's it's it's it helps and it encodes the enzyme inhibited by Viagra the which is the active ingredient like inhibited the side which is the active ingredient in Viagra. So how do you then if if your research is is really as promising as you say and everything is being tested how will this in influence cancer treatment in the future? >> So in that's the really important point because we need more clinical trials to look at the association of using Viagra or Sidelinfel and statin. We need also to mention that the combination between Viagra and statin that's our our analysis also showed had even more beneficial effect. So for cancer patients we need a new clinical trials that include both of them and we should then estimate the effectiveness of the treatment and that's what it's called drug repurposing. We need to do drug repurposing for this for these two medications to see if they the we in the help of clinical trial to see the effectiveness of both the drugs on cancer survivors or on cancer patients. >> Well, it's an amazing discovery nonetheless and I can't wait to hear if it really turns out the way we hope it might. So, Dr. Samahayak, thank you so much for your time today. >> Thank you. Now, changing gears because picking oranges may sound like one of the simplest jobs in agriculture, but for farmers, it's a billion dollar problem problem. It's estimated that the market for harvesting oranges and lemons alone is worth around $1 billion a year with a potential business opportunity of some $10 billion over the next decade. Now, an Israeli company is betting that robots could do the picking using artificial intelligence, computer vision, and robotic arms to identify and harvest fruit straight from the tree. So, for more, I'm now joined by Isaac Mazour, CEO and founder of Nanovail. Hi, Isaac. Thank you for joining me. >> Hi. >> Um, it must be a nightmare for a robot to pick these oranges because how do you know that the robot how does the robot know that the fruit is ripe, where it is? How do you do it? >> Well, first of all, he don't complain. So, he does the job as he's been trained and actually we teach him to do the job and we help him to do the job by proper design and he actually uh use several technologies. One is the AI of course AI which is his eyes and brain. He sees the fruit and he sees the fruit the way nature sees it. If even though the tree is very dense and high in depth in foliage, deep foliage, still light can get in. So if light can get in, we can see it as well. And we see the fruit, we map the fruit, we map his environment and we plan carefully how to approach it, how to grip it and how to sep how to trim it. >> So how does it compare to a human worker? >> We don't really can compare one to one. What we compare is the cost per per kilogram, how much you pay eventually for the picking. And we have about 30% uh lower in price. But more important than that, we are always ready to go. Workers is not. Work case has a competition. There's a you know is shrinking and rise pricing is rising. Robot will be always in in in ready for your uh command. That's the big advantage beside the cost. This is what growers is looking for is ability to plan and and to count on something which is not subjected to fierce competition every day. >> And what about because you focus now on citrus fruits like oranges. Um why specifically those types of fruit and like do you want or do you are you preparing to venture out to other sorts of fruits or vegetables? >> The answer is yes. Simply the longer answer is fruit oranges is what we call the lowhanging fruit. It's large. It's very visible and it's tough to pick for a human being. It's okay for robot. So this is where our contribution is is entry point is the best. And of course soon after we expand beyond sit beyond citrus to uh any fruit that require premium cutting cutting very carefully and sensitive to any damage because if you damage the fruit it's scrap you know you scrap the result. So this stone fruit, avocado, mango all are step by step uh will get that. >> And what about you just received a European vote of confidence. Can you tell us about this? This is a great achievement for us actually considered the odds you know one one over 50 and I think it was a great appreciation to and recognition of our technology our value to the uh to the community our value to the growers and our execution capability is very experienced people I'm seriously entrepreneur I've been build I built capital equipment business in semiconductor actually in very different market but still the experience is uh is is is valuable for this to build an organization for servicing a capital equipment across the world. >> Well, it's amazing that you got this vote of confidence. So, a big congratulations. >> Thank you, >> Isaac Bazour, CEO and founder of Nanovail. Thank you for your time today. Now, who hasn't cursed their way through endless traffic jams in a big city? No traffic may have found a solution for municipalities around the world. The startup is working to optimize traffic flow and in turn reduce pollution. More in this report. >> During rush hour, cities grind [music] to a halt. In most major cities, traffic lights still operate without taking realtime traffic conditions into account. So, how can we optimize road traffic? The solution may have been found by [music] the startup No Traffic. Founded in 2017, the company has developed the first autonomous urban traffic management platform [music] powered by artificial intelligence. Its goal to eliminate traffic jams and make streets safer in real time. >> [music] >> We understood that traffic has gone relatively through a very little change in the past 100 years and there has been some change but we thought that using technology we can make a major [music] breakthrough and that's what brought the company with a number of high-tech folks that didn't really know a lot about traffic to turn us into the one one of the leading traffic companies today. She reaches a traffic light at 2 in the morning. She's the only one there, but she gets a red light. Why should she get a red light? Okay, if there's nobody there, she should get a green. Okay, that's just one small example of how we can improve. >> The principle is simple but highly effective. The company installs smart devices on traffic lights equipped with cameras, radars, and AI chips. Within milliseconds, the system identifies everything moving through the intersection, [music] cars, buses, cyclists and pedestrians and instantly adapts to the flow of traffic. >> So what we do is we look at the traffic in real time. Uh whereas today in most uh cities the traffic is the traffic flows are based on statistical timing plans. We look at the traffic in real time and make realtime decisions based on what's act on the traffic flow that's actually out there. Now what we also do is we're running not just a system we're actually running a platform. I'll give you an example. In one of the big cities in uh in the US, uh a stadium, football stadium, Monday Night Football, the the corridor that we optimized, no police. Okay, it was just uh just the optimization that just the optimization work then and the traffic was much better than it would have been if uh if it would have been run by police. >> And municipalities don't even need to modify their existing infrastructure. Most cities already have some sort of technology out there called a detection technology. Okay. Then they moved forward to video technology to radar technology even thermal technologies even LAR technologies now. So there are different technologies and those are already deployed. Now what we're doing is we are utilizing existing deployed in deployed technology but we're taking down the old stuff and putting up the new stuff. >> Let's see it in action. What you got here is a city. This is traffic before we got there. And then you'll see up at two weeks later, same day of same time of day, same day of the week. Look at the traffic. Okay. So, so what you see here is that the whole queue just disappeared. Okay. And by the way, there's more cars running here than here obviously. Okay. So, there's more traffic running smoothly. [music] Another thing you'll see here on this side, look at the left turn. Okay. because we actually see what's going on, we will clear that left turn lane for them so that they won't have those types of issues. Right? So, this is part of the optimization that I showed you earlier. >> And the results speak [music] for themselves. >> We've seen that uh in cities where we do optimization, we've uh reduced traffic congestion by 30 to 50% in in many cases. [music] But one of the more interesting things we've we've shown that for every dollar spent on no traffic technology, the city gets economic benefit of somewhere between $75 to $200. Okay, which is great for the mayors because they see they're able to calculate the reduction in congestion. How much does that save the citizens? Emissions obviously and improvements in safety. So if there are less accidents and less red light running, then less people are getting injured. The company is also firmly focused on the future. >> We see traffic evolving all the time. Okay, there's more and more uh you see all sorts of autonomous vehicles. They can talk to each other. They do a very good idea of talking to themselves to each other, but somebody needs to die in the sky. By the way, at every intersection we deploy, we also have a special antenna that's built for the future. We are looking forward to, you know, all the future stuff where cars are going by themselves or anything like that. Artificial intelligence hasn't eliminated traffic just yet, but it may have just put the brakes on it for good. >> Israel's secondhand fashion market is growing, but buying and selling pre-owned clothes can still mean endless messages, haggling, and araging meetups. Now, Israeli startup Loop wants to make resale as easy as ordering something new with a dedicated marketplace for buying and selling pre-owned fashion and the payments and shipping built into the process. So, for more, I'm now joined in studio by Sasha Gasia. You are the founder of Loop. Thank you for being with me today. >> Thank you, Lane, for the invitation. >> Well, Sasha, please, we have 60 seconds on the clock. Please, what is your startup about? Okay, so looped um I I I just f when I when I was in France, I love to sell my clothes on on vintage and honestly when I arrived to Israel, uh I had a lot of clothes to sell and there was no solution for that. Um so the concept of loop is basically to sell your uh clothes that you don't use anymore. So loop is very easy. You take a picture of your clothes. You put some informations and it's in the app and after someone will just buy it and you have two options. You can just sell you can just uh ship them into a locker. So someone buy it in the app, you put it into a locker and someone will get it at home to the locker that is closest to his home or you can just take in a pickup like someone will come and take it from you. So you don't have even to move from your house. But it's not only that in in loop we also have a social part uh when you can just uh for example add your avatar, add your photo uh follow people, add friends. So, it's really, I think, an app that you can uh um both sell your clothes and enjoy uh into adding people and have fun. >> Well, how does it compare then to for instance vintage? Because I think we all know this platform, but you say you have an edge over vintage. >> Yeah. First of all, there is no vintage in Israel. So, we take a place that there was no one into it. So all the concept of loop is not only to sell as I said to sell clothes but it's also to uh to add friends to follow people and for example tomorrow when there will be influencers that will be uh unlooped which we begin to have now um you can just follow them and buy their own uh their own clothes that they don't use and because you love your you love their style um so that's the concept of loop big difference is that really we have this social that that vintage doesn't have and as I said they are not in Israel so we just uh We are just there whether whether or not >> and you think there's a big market for it in Israel. >> Yeah, huge one. Huge one. There is more than 10,000 places in in Tel Aviv. 100 sorry 100 place in Tel Aiv that sell secondhand like vintage shops. So there is a big market for that. But most of the time it's it's hard to find exactly what you need because secondhand is very special market. Um when you go to secondhand shops you have to find exactly what you like in the right size in your right style and some most of the time it's just like if there is one clothes that you like uh you will not find it in the right size for example. So so that's something that uh that looped solves because when you are unlooped you can just browse and and search for exactly the clothes that you want and you have like thousands of clothes when you are in a small market in a small shop most of them you don't have >> and do you think do you have any international aspirations if Israel becomes too small? Yes, of course we are already talking with some market. I will not talk about them now. I think it's it's a little bit early for that. But of course, we have. But the thing is I really think that Israel is already a big market. Like we can see that time for example in Israel is a billion dollar company now. So there is a market that is huge in Israel. There is big opportunities. So there is no reason that we will go already from now outside. First I want to develop loops inside of Israel instead of the country and after we'll see if we have to go international which I would love to. Well, we will wish you the best of luck. Sasha Garcia, the founder of Loop, thank you for your time today. >> Thank you very much. >> Now, a nearly three-year-old Israeli AI startup could be one of the ver could be on the verge of a multibillion dollar exit. And Elon Musk's SpaceX may be among the companies fighting to buy it. Deart, which specializes in real time AI generated video, is reportedly nearing a deal worth up to $7 billion. Natashi Keruk reports. >> Elon Musk is reportedly in talks to buy an Israeli startup that is barely three years old. Forget this, around $7 billion. And if this deal goes through, it could be a pretty big moment for Israel's AI industry. This company is called Decart. And what it's building is pretty wild. It develops AI models that can generate video in real time. That means that instead of an AI creating a video and making you wait for it to render, Decart's technology can create and then respond to video almost instantly as you interact with it. Its tech can even generate entire interactive worlds. And that is apparently what caught Elon Musk's eye because the billionaire has actually been following Decart since 2024 when the company launched Oasis, which is basically a video game that's powered by AI that generates the game world in real time. Since then, Musk and Decart CEO, whose name is Dean Lightersdorf, have reportedly stayed in regular contact, but Decart's bigger selling point isn't actually gaming. The company says its technology can generate AI video using significantly less computing power than competing models. And that is a huge huge deal in the AI world because generating video requires an enormous amount of computing power. And surprise surprise, computing power is expensive. Now, Decart is in advanced talks to be acquired by a major international technology company. And here's where it gets interesting. The company was actually negotiating with Nvidia, but just as those talks were nearing a deal, another tech giant reportedly came in with a bigger offer, and Decart's founders decided to go with the new bidder. So, who is it? Well, multiple sources believe that Elon Musk's Space X could be behind the offer. The crazy part is that Decart was only founded in September of 2023. It has around 100 employees and just three months ago it raised $300 million at a $4 billion valuation and now it could be sold for nearly twice that. So for investors that is obviously a massive massive return and if SpaceX is the buyer well there's another major implication for Israel. SpaceX could establish its first R&D center in Tel Aviv using Decart as its base. >> Natashi Kerick there. Now, China, of course, is becoming more than a destination for sightseeing. This summer, tourists are flocking to the country for a taste of the future with robots, drone shows, AI, and high-speed trains. Technology isn't just part of the trip, it's becoming the destination. Emily Frances has the story. China, it's the new trend online, following earlier viral travel trends like China travel and China cool. As more international visitors look to experience China beyond the usual tourist hotspots and technology is increasingly becoming part of the itinerary. At a robotics exhibition in Beijing, tourists can get up close with humanoid robots watching them make everything from coffee, flip pancakes, dance, and even write Chinese calligraphy. >> I find it very fun. I think it's like an amazing thing that uh China has developed such incredible technology. Um, we in Mexico don't have this many robots. So, I think it changed my perspective on how technology can probably change the world in the future. >> And some tourists are taking that experience one step further, visiting factories to see how the technology is actually made. At Xiaomi's electric vehicle factory in Beijing, hundreds of robots carry out precision tasks along the production line. They could see a lot of interesting things that maybe they wouldn't be able to see back home in terms of the sophistication and probably more than anything just the scale. I think the scale and the level of advancement would be pretty staggering. >> But the high-tech experience doesn't stop at the factory floor. Tourists are riding high-speed trains between cities, using AI multilingual guides at scenic locations, and watching massive drone light shows in Shenzhen. convenient stuff like these which make China very cool and traveling in China very cool. >> At the same time, visitors are looking for more hands-on cultural experiences from picking tea leaves in Kanan to exploring China's historic cities and shopping for its latest tech products. And the numbers suggest the interest is translating into real world travel with China welcoming nearly 23 million foreign visitors in the first half of this year, up more than 20% from the same period last year. Tourist spending by international visitors has also jumped with a reported 72.9% year-on-year increase since June. China's visa-free policies make getting there easier. Travel agencies say visitors are increasingly asking for technology to be built directly into their trips, including robot companies, drone makers, autonomous driving experiences, and even drone deliveries at the Great Wall. It's a new kind of tourism where the destination itself a showcase for technology. China, what a place. Now, is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it is neither. It is a robot that can fly through the air and swim underwater. Engineered by MIT, the robot was inspired by diving birds like petrols and puffins using its wings to move through both air and water. It costs just $300, can fly at over 13 mph and swim at nearly 2.2 mph. The FAV robot could fly autonomously along set routts before diving underwater to monitor wildlife or collect samples from toxic algae blooms, volcanic lakes, or even in areas near icebergs. And after the initial breakthrough, the lab is now seeking funding to develop the robot even further. And that's all we have time for today. I'm your host, Lynn Plmeer. The show is going on a twow week summer recess. So I'll be happy to welcome you back in September. Enjoy that last bit of summer wherever you are. Thank you for watching for now and I'll be seeing you very soon here on I24 News.