The Healthcare industry is one of the most important industries among all industries in the world. Ensuring the good health of people by applying the latest advances in the industry is an important goal all medical institutions and leaders pursue in this field. Technological advances can be incremental or disruptive.
Of the different technologies in the healthcare industry, Nanotechnology and specifically DNA nanotechnology holds the greatest promise for the healthcare industry’s disruption. DNA is the molecule that stores and transmits genetic information in biological systems. The field of DNA nanotechnology takes this molecule out of its biological context and uses its abilities to assemble structural motifs and then connect them together. This field has had a remarkable impact on nanoscience and nanotechnology, and has been revolutionary in our ability to control molecular self-assembly.
Taking DNA nanotechnology, a step further, an avid healthcare leader, Roy Farfara MD is utilizing DNA machinery to create better medical solutions. 6 years ago, Dr. Farfara founded TrioxNano in Israel and began his most important endeavor of creating programmable nanomachines to better deliver APIs to their target.
Developing the Basis for Programming Medicine – S.M.A.R.T Nanoparticles Platform
TrioxNano started in 2015 to develop programmable biologic nanocarriers that are able to accurately deliver payloads to their target. The company developed the S.M.A.R.T (Stimuli Multi Adjusted Responsive Technology) nanoparticles platform for the intelligent delivery of chemotherapy to cancer cells. S.M.A.R.T platform opened a window to a vast field of inventions, of intelligent nanoscale computerized machines that are able to sense a combination of multiple variables (at least 2) in their environment and exert action of unloading active payloads based on preprogrammed mechanisms. The disadvantage with SMART was it could only be programmed at the time the particle was manufactured.
Transcending Medicine by Programming It
Dr. Farfara founded TrioxNano with a vision to transcend medicine by programming it. As a surgeon in the urology department, Dr. Farfara was treating patients with kidney, bladder and prostate cancers. He became well aware of the limited and relatively primitive options offered to metastatic patients (surgery/chemotherapy/radiation) and decided to tackle the problem from another angle and try to solve it. The company’s technology based on DNA machinery was developed and optimized through the last 6 years by intensive research done by TrioxNano’s ultra-smart team that includes Dr. Farfara proficient Post Docs from Harvard, Oxford, Rockefeller and the NIH.
Inducing Revolutionary and Disruptive Programmable Solutions
TrioxNano’s technological solutions will induce two disruptive revolutions in the next 5-10 years. The first revolution is the ability to program medicine in real-time, this improves the therapeutic window of most medicine. It is currently being tested in TrioxNano’s lab on human cancer cells. The program codes are based on previous literature knowledge for example in the case of TNBC cancer (a very aggressive breast cancer), literature states the abundance of proteins like Nucleolin, Mucin1, and PDL1 on the membrane of these cancer cells.
TrioxNano uses this knowledge and creates programs that are uploaded onto its modular particle so that a patient who presents for example with Mucin1in her cancer will receive the Muc1-related program. But oncologic literature (accumulated human knowledge) is still very limited and that is the reason TrioxNano developed the second technology which complements and further enhances the potential of PCPM-programmed medicine!
The second revolution called “tissue-derived programming” is a data revolution that will allow TrioxNano to transcend past the current knowledge gap and comprehensively differentiate disease from healthy tissues. This revolution could only commence once the ability to program medicine was achieved. Tissue-derived programming allows it to upload programs that can differentiate traits whether they are known or unknown to literature expressed on the target tissue AND not expressed on the healthy tissue surrounding it.
Remembering that human knowledge to date is lacking, TrioxNano is just at the tip of the iceberg to comprehensively describe all the proteins expressed on a specific tissue such as a tumor. In the case of a cancer patient, different metastasis has different traits and the cancer cells keep dynamically evolving based on the treatments being given to the patient through time. Though proteomic technologies allow differentiating thousands of known proteins at a time, it does address treating these and requires a further degree of complication to address the correct treatment for the diagnosed trait. TrioxNano’s technology allows it to choose and upload the correct sequences out of 10^35 different sequences.
This revolution means the dependency on the current human knowledge (literature) can be bypassed, and cancers such as TNBC that are known to date to present 2-3 proteins can be targeted by the many yet undiscovered proteins today!
Utilizing Disruptive, Novel, and DNA-based Technology
TrioxNano’s technology is based on DNA machinery, the pandemic has proven the advantage of RNA vaccines compared to older technologies of attenuated viruses. RNA vaccines present a small percentage of the potential offered to humanity by DNA-based nanotechnology. The technology is so disruptive and novel that to date there is no competition, though Dr. Farfara believes the situation will not stay the same in 3-5, (which is the time it took to create the know-how and expertise to stabilize it) competitors will follow.
Concise Advice to Aspiring Entrepreneurs
Dr. Farfara advises aspiring entrepreneurs to start by finding the right team. He considers that being people oriented is the most important value of a business leader. He tells them that failures will usually teach them more than success, therefore persistence and perseverance are required. He asks them to stay dedicated to their ideas and beliefs no matter what and if they have the option to choose disruption over incremental technological projects.