NutritionIsraeli Startup CLT Partners With Dutch Erasmus Medical Centre To Develop A Cure For Atrial Fibrillation
Today, the Israeli medtech startup company CLT Ltd. announced the establishment of Closed Loop Therapies (CLT) BV - a joint venture between Erasmus University Medical Centre (Rotterdam, the Netherlands), a highly prominent medical institute in Europe, and CLT Israel. The joint venture aims to develop and commercialise a novel therapeutic system, consisting of an arrhythmia-detecting drug pump combined with a unique drug, for automatic and immediate treatment of emerging atrial fibrillation (AF). Market size is estimated at 2.5-3 billion Euro, annually.
AF, the most common cardiac arrhythmia, causes substantial morbidity, mortality, decreased quality of life and considerable healthcare expenses. Existing AF treatment methods, whether electrical, surgical or pharmacological, have proven largely inadequate due to limited efficacy and/or potential for adverse effects.
The system is based on a breakthrough discovery by two of the founders of CLT, Professor Eli Ovsyshcher of Ben Gurion University (formerly Head of Pacing and Arrhythmia Services at Soroka Medical Centre) and Dr Ilya Fleidervish of the Hebrew University. This discovery led to a highly effective method for pharmacological conversion of AF, employing brief bolus injections of rapidly hydrolysable cholinergic agonists (RHCA) into the bloodstream.
To further this discovery, CLT Ltd. initiated collaboration with Professor Luc Jordaens, Head of Electrophysiology at the Thorax Centre of Erasmus MC and a leading expert in cardiac arrhythmia.
"This joint venture is first of its kind between an Israeli medical startup and a Dutch centre of excellence," says Dr. Dan Gelvan, co-founder of CLT Ltd. and director of CLT BV. "It opens opportunities for Israeli early-stage companies with complex technologies to establish an "incubation stage" presence in Europe and obtain invaluable professional and financial support." Steven Tan, Business Developer of Erasmus MC, comments: "We are proud to welcome CLT as the first Israeli company to join our incubator programme. We hope it will be the first of many such international collaborations."
According to Dr. Gelvan, the inception of the joint venture with Erasmus MC was initiated by Dr. Binah Baum via her extensive connections with European incubators and bioregions. It was supported and facilitated by Kurtz Marketing & Management of Rotterdam, a business development consultancy in life sciences and high-tech, and received strategic assistance from Mr Wim van Sluis, Partner at Daamen & Van Sluis, and former Alderman for Economic Affairs in Rotterdam. This initiative was backed by TechnoPartner, an intergovernmental agency that supports new technological business ventures in the Netherlands.
CLT BV will be led by Ivo Timmermans, MD MBA, a highly accomplished veteran of the European pharmaceutical industry. Dr Timmermans joined CLT BV on March 1, 2009 after holding management positions at GlaxoWellcome, BASF Pharma, Rhein Biotech and Phico Therapeutics.
Israeli Startup CLT