For over a decade, Prof. Rachela Popovtzer has been developing gold nanoparticles for various medical applications and utilizing them as a sensor to diagnose and treat some of the more common and life-threatening illnesses, including Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer and depression. In her multidisciplinary lab, physicians and engineers work shoulder to shoulder with biologists, physicists and chemists; this fruitful heterogeneity inspired and enabled the development of this nontoxic, highly effective and precise technology, next-generation medicine. In 2021, Prof. Popovtzer’s technology left the confines of her lab and became the foundation of a startup company named Nanocarry Therapeutics. “The company is a graduate of UnBox Ventures, BIU’s impact creation platform, where we, the founders, were trained and guided in our first steps as researchpreneurs,” says Prof. Popovtzer, Nanocarry’s CSO. Her co-founder and former PhD student, Dr. Oshra Betzer, COO, adds, “Through UnBox’s vast and varied community, we were matched with Revital Mandil Levin, PhD, who became Nanocarry’s CEO.” Dr. Mandil Levin brings to the table 15 years of senior business and corporate development experience in both early-stage and mature clinical-stage biopharmaceutical companies, including a successful NASDAQ IPO of Neuroderm (2014) and its acquisition by Mitsubishi Tanabe at $1.1 billion in 2017. “Coached by UnBox’s up-to-the-minute unique methodology and experts, we defined and validated the technology, the need and the go-to-market strategy, combining our expertise and experience to translate this groundbreaking technology into a successful biopharma,” says Prof. Popovtzer. The field of biological drugs has revolutionized the way we treat diseases, but continues to have two main shortcomings that Nanocarry’s technology is poised to overcome: crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and delivering multiple drugs to the same target simultaneously. “We are developing a new class of therapeutics based on bioengineered nanoparticles with novel capabilities to treat metastatic cancer and brain diseases,” says Dr. Betzer, who led Prof. Popovtzer’s lab attempts and eventual success at engineering nanoparticles that can cross the bloodbrain barrier. “In the field of nanomedicine, it has been well established that gold nanoparticles allow for surface conjugation with various peptides, proteins, antibodies and other biomolecules. At Nanocarry, we have taken a quantum leap with the science of gold nanoparticles, engineering surface modifications to create our proprietary AxS platform. This platform enables the gold nanoparticles to target specific sites with different drugs and therapeutics, making our AxS platform a core for a new class of smart drugs for the treatment of brain metastases, metastatic cancer and central nervous system (CNS) diseases.” Nanocarry Therapeutics Ltd. Biologics Beyond Boundaries 30
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