"The best Parkinson's medication will be Israeli, and hybrid"
Michal Tsur at the Isreal Business Conference credit: Cadya Levy
Michal Tsur at the Isreal Business Conference credit: Cadya Levy

9 Dec, 2024 14:20
Ela Levi-Weinrib
Remepy co-founder Michal Tsur told the Israel Business Conference about the therapy revolution whose time has come.

"The best medication for Parkinson's will come from Israel. It will be a hybrid medication, and the world's best hybrid medication." said Dr. Michal Tsur, co-founder and CEO of Remepy, in conversation with "Globes" technology reporter Meytal Vaizberg at the 2024 Globes Israel Business Conference. Tsur was a participant in the Game Changers track in collaboration with Playtika.

Tsur is a high-tech entrepreneur, co-founder of Cyota (acquired by RSA Security in 2005), founder of Kaltura, and co-founder and CEO of hybrid medications developer Remepy, which she founded together with Or Shoval and Prof. Amir Amedi in 2022.

About founding the company, she said: "We identified many waves occurring in the healthcare world. Covid contributed to healthcare increasingly coming into our homes, in a much more significant way. Integrative medicine, which is something we don't understand, is very, very important in treating any disease. There is almost no disease whose treatment would not improve if barriers between disciplines were shattered, and there were not one type of medication and one type of treatment. There is also a technological revolution of AI, and the understanding that medicine needs to be personalized.

"We looked at this thing called medication, and realized that drugs have hardly changed in recent years. The product has barely changed - it's either a pill, or a liquid, or a patch. We said that if we were to combine digital capability and treatment capability in a digital application, along with the drug, then the world of medicine and the world of medication could change very dramatically. This is what drove us to create the first hybrid drug: a digital drug.

"A hybrid drug is a product that is interesting both to those who create drugs and to those who create technology, and therefore precisely for all market players who seek innovation and breakthroughs, it is very, very interesting. For drug manufacturers, we’re suddenly bringing out-of-the-box thinking about how to make treatments accessible and change the entire concept of medication. Think of an internet medication as essentially a medication developed not only with chemical elements, but also with a digital treatment protocol that works together with the medication. We are investing a lot now in developing a hybrid medication for Parkinson's disease, and we completed an exceptionally successful clinical trial a few weeks ago. Patients show better results when they combine a pharmacological product with a non-pharmacological product."

Asked how she identifies areas ripe for disruption, Tsur responded, "New markets are generally not created alone and in a vacuum. Often, several markets are created in parallel. Around the year 2000, when Cyota was founded, we saw that people were starting to shop online. We understood that a new online shopping market would be created, and alongside it, we saw a very online shopping security sector. When we began, we realized that the problem was far bigger, because the entire world of banking transactions had moved online, so we established a company for information security technology that is still in use today. In 2006, when Kaltura was founded, we saw that people were starting to consume more video content. Google had just acquired YouTube, and everyone who created content wanted to bring it online, but no one had the tools to do it well, and there weren't even smartphones to view it conveniently. So, it was something that could be built upon -- and then ride that wave."

"If you want something done, get up and do it"

One of the more interesting initiatives in which Tsur is currently involved, is the establishment of a new airline or flight route that will allow the public to purchase flights at prices lower than those at present. "I don't know a single person who doesn't need flights to do business, meet investors, or bring clients to Israel," Tsur pointed out. "Anyone who’s tried to find a flight to the US in recent months, has found it almost impossible. We are a nation of entrepreneurs. In the end, all you need to get something done is simply to get up in the morning and do it."

"When we looked at what had happened in the past year and the year before it, people realized that many of the things we expected would be handled by the public sector, weren’t taken care of. So, we just have to do them. Aviation seems like a distinct area that the state should have handled, but is not handling. For a year, we’ve been in a situation in which flights are suspended. There are very few companies operating flights to and from Israel, and the prices are intolerable. We would have expected this to be dealt with, but it wasn't. We understood that a solution could be found, and that we could create an airline for people to fly to the US at a normal price. The hope is that, at the beginning of the year, this will be available not just to the business sector, but to the public as a whole."

The moderator pointed out that the high-tech industry had become increasingly involved in public life and in finding solutions to the public's problems. Tsur addressed this, saying, "The private sector should not replace the public sector, but as a nation, we have amazing entrepreneurial qualities, and you have to serve as a personal example, to create and offer solutions. There are solutions we haven’t thought of, and we need to forge the path, so that things will be better for everyone.

"When you think of entrepreneurship, you think of high-tech, but entrepreneurship exists in every area of our lives, especially in the difficult times we've gone through," Tsur added. "Over the past two years, I've seen so much activity and so many initiatives, each of which is a whole world as far as our continued existence and continued success as a country are concerned. And if there's something that’s important for all of us to understand, it’s that we need to take initiative. I meet people who are very downhearted, but in the end, lots of small actions produce a very big effect. It's like applause at a sports event or a performance, when someone starts clapping, others join, and then there's a wave of applause. At this time, everyone needs to seek out that initial handclap that you have to start with. And that's what will bring about the restoration of our country."
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