The company "3i" received from "Yida", the applications arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science, an exclusive license for the development of the technology. Another microscopy system based on the institute's research was developed by the company "Idea Biomedical"
The Intelligent Imaging Innovations company from the USA (3i) recently signed an agreement with the "Yade" company, the applications arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science, according to which the company received a license to develop advanced microscopes based on the inventions of the institute's scientists.
Amir Nyberg, CEO of "Yade": "We are talking business. 'Yida' works efficiently in all fields of science, and examines business opportunities all over the world. The agreement we recently signed with a leading global company in the field of microscopy illustrates the opportunities inherent in inventions in the field of physics."
In confocal microscopy, which is a sophisticated technology for obtaining images of living cells and tissues in three dimensions with high resolution, a beam of light is aimed at an object and illuminates it point by point. But sometimes this process is too slow. In brain research, for example, scientists want to illuminate an entire network of neurons in a certain area of the brain at once. A new approach developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science, called temporal focusing microscopy, and invented by Prof. Yaron Zilberberg and Dr. Dan Oron from the Department of Physics of Complex Systems, will enable a significant improvement in this field. With this method, the focus of a laser beam is controlled in time and not in space: the light is aimed at the cells being studied in long impulses (pulses), which are shortened when the beam reaches the desired plane, where it causes the required illumination. In this way, it is possible to illuminate an entire brain area by exposure to a single light source.
The technology enables extreme precision, thanks to the fact that it is based on extremely short pulses, the length of which does not exceed a number of femtoseconds (a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second).
Dr. Carl Kilburn, co-president of the "i3" company: "We intend to integrate the temporal focus into a number of new products designed for opto-genetics and other applications. In these applications, simultaneous illumination in one plane of many cells or of many parts of a certain cell is essential for understanding the behavior of complex neuronal networks and other biological phenomena that occur too quickly to be examined by methods that illuminate the target point by point."
Other optical systems based on the inventions of Weizmann Institute of Science scientists are already being successfully sold by the Rehovot-based "Idea Biomedical" company, a subsidiary of the IDEA Machine Development Design and Production Ltd. company. These systems - "WiSoft", "Argos" and "Hermes" - allow imaging of living cells and their structural components with high resolution and at great speed, without loss of important biological information. The advanced imaging maintains the sharpness of the image at all magnification levels, and is performed using software for rapid analysis of the data.
Shlomo Turgeman, CEO of "Idea Biomedical": "We recently signed two agreements for the sale of the 'Hermes' system abroad - one to a medical university and one to a large pharmaceutical company. We are going to sign several more agreements soon. In fact, we are in the midst of building a global distribution system."
One response
Wow sounds amazing, well done!