Dr. Ben Maoz's lab is featured in "The future is already here" on KAN11

Dr. Ben Maoz's lab specialized in organ-on-a-chip technology and was recently featured in "The future is already here" on KAN11. The TV program showcases cutting edge Israeli research in the field of regenerative medicine, tissue engineering and stem cell research. Recently, Dr. Ben Maoz's lab was featured in an episode themed "Growing organs on a chip", following the story of Bar Belfer, an Israeli journalist, actress and musician, who was involved in a terrible car accident and sustained brain injury. 

"We can use Bar's cells to generate brain-on-a-chip devices which mimic the biology and physiology of her condition. We grow the neurons on sensors and observe their function, we can examine the biologic processes which occur during an accident, the reaction of the cells to trauma, and simulate brain injury on-a-chip. We can use this platform to scan thousands of compounds with therapeutic potential and see what works best for the patient." Explains Dr. Ben Maoz "The problem with head injury is that patients may experience a plethora of symptoms down the road, migraines and epilepsy to name a few. The doctor prescribes a drug which has a high probability to help, however, sometimes it doesn't help and the therapeutic approach needs to be fine tuned in a process of trial and error. Our devices can circumvent this process, grow the patient's mini-brain on-a-chip and find the most effective drug, this is the vision of personalized medicine."

(Left to right: Bar Belfer, Ben Shani, and Dr. Ben Maoz)