Amorphical Ltd., has successfully completed a clinical trial of its new kind of calcium (amorphous calcium, which does not crystalize) that the body absorbs better than crystalline calcium that is found in most products now on the market. The trial included 15 patients at the Sourasky Medical Center's Clinical Nutrition Unit in Tel Aviv. The trial found that the patients' absorption of amorphous calcium was double the average absorption of crystalline calcium.
The company is also conducting a clinical trial of amorphous calcium to fuse bones in patients with osteoporosis. The company aims to develop a product as a nutritional supplement, and later possibly as medication.
Amorphical produces amorphous calcium on the basis of the mechanism used by the blue crayfish. An aquafarmer, Yossi Ben-Hakim, who was raising blue crayfish at a fish farm in the Arava for the ornamental market, realized that the crustacean shed and regrew its exoskeleton in just three days, even in the absence of calcium in its freshwater environment. It was able to absorb the calcium in its previous exoskeleton and preserve the calcium in an amorphous state, rather than in an crystalline structure.
In 2006, Ben Gurion University of the Negev researchers, Prof. Amir Sagi and Dr. Amir Berman succeeded in replicating the mechanism in the laboratory. They also studied the component in the blue crayfish's body that carries out this activity, in order to see whether there were other materials or mechanisms that contributed to the building of the exoskeleton.
Amorphical has raised $1.2 million from private investors.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 17, 2014
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