66 August 29 • 2019
jn

An international research team led by the 
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in 
Haifa has developed innovative, AI-based soft-
ware to detect obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), 
a condition in which people stop breathing for 
about 10 seconds or more during sleep.
The prevalence of this syndrome increases 
with age and affects more than one in five indi-
viduals in the general adult population — par-
ticularly males and those who are overweight.
 OSA is characterized by halts in breathing 
during the night and lower oxygen levels in 
the blood. The syndrome causes fatigue and 
sleepiness during the day, which can lead to 
inefficiency and accidents while working and, 
in some cases, to traffic accidents. OSA also 
increases the risk of developing diabetes and 
cardiovascular disease. 
“The model we developed is a reliable and 
effective tool for identifying sleep apnea in 
large populations,
” said Dr. Joachim Behar, 
a member of the Technion’
s Faculty of 
Biomedical Engineering who led the study.
This model can, in the longer term, be used 
to develop a suitable mobile application and 
eventually be part of a smart watch or bracelet 
that includes an oximeter to extract the nec-
essary biomarkers and perform an accurate 
self-examination for OSA, he said.
“Sleep apnea can be treated effectively, but 
many sufferers remain undiagnosed,
” said 
Behar.
The technology used to diagnose the syn-
drome in sleep labs, called polysomnography, 

records brain waves and oxygen level in the 
blood, as well as heart rate, breathing, and eye 
and leg movements during sleep. But it is costly 
and not widely available. 
The technology that Behar and his team 
developed is based on data and biomarkers 
obtained from 887 subjects from the general 
adult population in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
After sifting through the patient informa-
tion, the system was able to successfully iden-
tify all the clinical cases of medium or severe 
OSA, the researchers said.
Standardized sleep apnea diagnosis ques-
tionnaires, by comparison, missed more than 
15 percent of severe cases, while the use of 
pulse oximetry only detected the severe cases 
but failed to identify some of the medium OSA 
cases, the researchers said.
The model the team developed is called 
OxyDOSA, and the researchers have made it 
available for further research.

Tel Aviv University researchers believe 
they have found a “pathway” that causes 
melanoma cells to spread to the brain — 
and may have found a way to block it. 
The study was conducted on mice 
but has also been validated on samples 
of human brain tissue where melanoma 
had spread, the researchers said.
“Melanoma is the deadliest skin can-
cer due to its high rate of metastasis, 
frequently to the brain,
” said Prof. Neta 
Erez of the Department of Pathology at 
TAU’
s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, lead 
author of the study. “The prognosis of 
patients with brain metastases is very 
grim.
” 
Patients used to die from metastases 
in other parts of the body before they 
were spotted in the brain. However, 

because treatments have improved and 
patients are living longer, “the incidence 
of diagnosed brain metastases is increas-
ing. Understanding how and why brain 
metastasis occurs is an urgent challenge 
facing cancer researchers today,
” Erez 
said in a Times of Israel story.
In their work, they took mice with 
spontaneous melanoma brain metasta-
sis and studied how it reacted with the 
brain.
“We discovered that melanoma cells 
can activate inflammatory pathways that 
lead to the brain and then hijack this 
pathway,
” Erez told Times of Israel.
When the researchers used genetic 
manipulation to neutralize the receptors 
in the melanoma cells, they successfully 
blocked the ability of the tumor cells to 

respond to the hijack. 
The research, emphasized Erez, was 
done on mice and not humans. But the 
researchers validated their results in the 
brain metastases of patients who had 
undergone brain surgery. They found 
that in humans, the astrocytes cells in 
the brain express the same inflammato-

ry factor and the same receptor. 
“Our findings suggest that blocking 
this signaling pathway may prevent 
brain metastasis,
” Erez said. They now 
are studying what could be the trigger 
that instigates inflammation in the 
brain, which promotes metastasis.

health | Israel’
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COURTESY TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY

Apnea Detection Study

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Melanoma Study Explores 
Melanoma Study Explores 
Spread to Brain
Spread to Brain

A team of students from the 
ORT Herzl Technological 
school in Kishinev, Moldova, 
are among those honored with 
the 2019 World ORT Gina 
and Joseph Harmatz Award 
that recognizes youngsters at 
ORT schools worldwide who 
have excelled in social respon-
sibility.
The Moldova students cre-
ated a wearable device that 
can constantly monitor the 
condition of people with long-
term medical issues and then 
notify loved ones and emer-
gency services if the person 
suffers a heart attack, stroke, 
fall or other medical concern.
The device is fitted to a 
simple vest or T-shirt, mean-
ing the user can easily wear it 
daily.
Their smart T-shirt features 
integrated temperature and 
pulse sensors, as well as a 
gyroscope and accelerometer 
to detect severe changes in 
body position — if the patient 
has fallen or lost conscious-
ness, for example. If an inci-
dent occurs and the wearer 
cannot respond within 15 sec-

onds, a mobile app triggers an 
alert to notify family members 
and transmits the person’
s 
location by GPS. It can also 
send real-time health data and 
vital signs to assist medical 
teams via Bluetooth.
Sandu Chirita, the team’
s 
lead developer, said, “We 
have developed an early stage 
prototype that has all the 
initial features. We have to 
gather feedback from those 
the shirt would help and then 
adapt our design to fulfil their 
needs.
“We plan to make the 
device smaller, more accurate, 
more reliable and more con-
venient for the wearer, as well 
as integrating textile changes 
to get rid of wires. We need 
to find resources to make the 
device fully washable as well.”
Sandu said the team 
was sorry not to be able to 
“improve the life of every 
person and cure every disease, 
but even helping a single per-
son is a step toward making 
the world a better place to live 
in — and that’
s what tikkun 
olam is about.”

Students Create Smart T-Shirt

 
Dr. Joachim Behar, 

a member of the 

Technion’
s Faculty of 

Biomedical Engineering

TAMAR SHAMI

Tel Aviv University researchers: Malak Amer, Prof. Neta 

Erez and Dr. Hila Doron.

