A curved plastic tube developed by students and doctors in Israel could one day be an alternative to risky weight loss surgery.
       A flexible C-shaped plastic tube developed by students and doctors at an Israeli university could soon become an alternative to risky and invasive obesity treatments.
       A new gastric sleeve, called MetaboShield, can be inserted through the mouth and stomach to block absorption of food from the small intestine.
       Unlike gastric bypass surgery and other bariatric procedures, this endoscopic procedure does not require general anesthesia or incisions, allowing patients to lose weight without the risk of serious complications.
        The only gastric sleeve currently on the market is based on a stent – a mesh tube – to prevent food from shifting as it passes from the stomach into the small intestine. However, this type of anchor can damage the soft tissues of the digestive tract and must be removed and cleaned regularly.
       MetaboShield, on the other hand, is rigid in length but flexible in width, allowing it to maintain the unique shape it needs to work.
        “The concept here is to follow the anatomy of the duodenum, which is the C-shaped structure at the entrance from the stomach to the intestines,” said Dr. Yaakov Nahmias, head of the bioengineering program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. persists in almost all people, so the gastric sleeve can be secured in the intestine without using a stent to attach it to the stomach.”
       And because the device is flexible across its entire width, it absorbs pressure as the bowel moves and moves.
        MetaboShield was invented by students of the biodesign program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with the Hadassah Medical Center. This interdisciplinary program aims to teach students how to bring new medical devices to market quickly.
       “In this program, we recruit clinical fellows, business school students at the master’s level — MBA students — and PhDs,” says Nahmias, “and then we teach them how to build medical technology startups.”
        Before students start assembling or even designing a new device, they spend about four months identifying a clinical problem. But not all health problems can be solved. Given that most medical procedures are paid for by insurance companies, students are looking for questions that are equally “financially beneficial.”
        According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 35 percent of adults in the United States are obese. The estimated cost of the epidemic—the loss of productivity and associated complications such as diabetes and heart disease—is over $140 billion, making this health issue ripe for innovative thinking.
        “The C-shape is a very, very smart idea. It was actually a gastroenterologist who came up with the idea,” Nahmias said, referring to Dr. Yishai Benuri-Silbiger, a pediatric gastroenterologist at the Hadassah Medical Center. groups of clinical specialists.
        Although MetaboShield has been validated using a model of the small intestine, it will be some time before it can be tested in humans. Taking the device beyond mere prototypes would first require animal experiments to determine its safety. In addition, significant funding is required to fund future clinical trials in people with obesity.
        However, after eight months, students had to submit something more than just an innovative model. Since the concept has been patented, several pharmaceutical and medical companies are interested in developing this technology.
        “He’s actually very advanced,” Nahmias said. “Most companies take about a year or two before they get to that stage — before they have a business plan, patents, and then prototypes and some big experiments.”
       In addition to the interdisciplinary nature of the biodesign program, the unconventional nature of the students themselves supports this type of purposeful innovation.
       Students tend to be in their 30s compared to students at many US universities, in part because of Israel’s compulsory military service of two to three years for all young people.
       This gives hands-on experience to the physicians working on these programs who have treated war wounds on the battlefield, outside of the clinical setting.
        “A lot of our engineers are married, they have kids, they work at Intel, they work in semiconductors, they have industrial experience,” Nahmias said. “I think it works a lot better for biological design.”
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