Hillel's Tech Corner: NeuroSense: What ALS patients deserve

• Date: 07 January 2021
• Author: HILLEL FULD
• Published date: 07 January 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Of course, there are scientists and entrepreneurs working on this around the clock, whether it's cancer, ALS, or many other medical conditions that need a cure, but we still have not cracked it and that both upsets and confuses me.

For this reason, when an old friend, Donna Griffit, who works with start-ups to help them tell their story more effectively, told me about NeuroSense Therapeutics, a company developing a cutting-edge cure for ALS patients, I had to hear more.

NeuroSense Therapeutics is a clinical stage drug development company offering ground-breaking treatment for ALS patients, as well as other neurodegenerative diseases.

If, somehow, you are not familiar with ALS, sometimes referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, it causes rapid deterioration in motor function, with a life expectancy of two to five years. I have personally seen the suffering this horrible disease causes both to the patient and the family. Stephen Hawking, who died in 2018, is arguably the most well-known and long-lived ALS patient. There are approximately 13,500 people in the US with ALS today, according to the CDC, and around 600 in Israel, according to the Hadassah Medical Center.

I spoke with Alon Ben-Noon, the cofounder and CEO of Neurosense, who brings years of experience in the field to the table having run a successful consultancy firm that worked and collaborated with many leading pharmaceutical R&D companies, including Mediwound, Chiasma, Teva, NeuroDerm and others. He is joined by an incredible team and advisory board consisting of multidisciplinary professionals with years of experience with drug development and ALS clinical trials. Ninety percent of the team are women scientists, researchers and technologists, which is a rare and refreshing sight in the tech and bio ecosystem.

When I asked Alon what the inspiration to establish Neurosense was, he told me about a life-changing meeting he had in 2016: "Shay Rishoni was diagnosed in 2010 with ALS – before that he was an Ironman – and a businessman. After his diagnosis, like any obstacle he had encountered in life, he decided to fight ALS. Shay joined an organization called Prize for Life as CEO – they put out challenges and award prizes to teams advancing solutions for ALS patients.

When I met him he was completely paralyzed, communicating via a computer – like Hawking. I was blown away by him – I couldn't understand how [he] accomplished WAY more in a day than I could with his limitations. I decided at that moment that...