A medical startup aims to shrink terminal cancer

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

Imagine a time, in the not-so-distant future, when an aggressive, frightening cancer diagnosis is no longer an agonizing death sentence, but rather more like an inconvenient nuisance — something worse than a root canal, but less troublesome than an appendectomy.

That’s Uzi Sofer’s goal: to deprive the malach hamaves of the deadliest weapon in his arsenal.

Sofer is CEO and cofounder of the Israeli biomedical tech start-up Alpha Tau, and if the company’s clinical testing continues with its already positive results, the grand prize, the most dreaded diagnosis of all, metastatic cancer — stage 4 — could become treatable.

That day could soon be upon us, thanks to the technological leap developed by Sofer’s company, based in Jerusalem’s Har Hotzvim industrial park. The 52-year-old Sofer is under no illusion as to how this came about.

“When you’re sitting in my chair,” he says, “you often need to make decisions when there is no way to know in real time what the right choice is. And maybe after two months — sometimes it’s a year, sometimes it’s a week — you see that you made the right choice, even though you didn’t have all the information you needed to go in the right direction. For me, this is Hashgachah pratit. You get help from Above in those challenging times.”

Uzi Sofer has clearly benefited from a great deal of such Divine providence. Although an accountant by training, he’s spent two decades in managerial positions in both private and public enterprises and specializes in the development of medical devices. He’s got the gift for recognizing what works and applying the practical know-how that has made Israel the Start-Up Nation.

The treatment, called Alpha DaRT (the acronym stands for “diffusing alpha-emitters radiation therapy”), is a revolutionary form of cutting-edge alpha radiation treatment that actually irradiates cancer cells internally. It’s still undergoing clinical trials in the US, but if the product’s experience in Israel and Japan is any guide, success in America will follow soon — and it is primed to break into a fertile market that puts a premium on hope.

On January 10, the company announced clinical trial results for treatment of malignant skin and soft tissue cancers. All ten patients in the most recent trial saw their tumors disappear completely, with no significant side effects being reported from the treatment. To date, 100 patients have participated in the clinical trials, and 97 percent have reported shrinkage of their tumors — even though in some cases their tumors had returned after previous treatments by other methods. Alpha Tau is preparing for a multi-center clinical trial in the US this year, as part of the FDA approval process.

“They’ve completed the Phase I trial of feasibility in the United States, and they’re now preparing for the larger trial to be done, to corroborate and confirm those findings,” explains Dr. Michael Zelefsky, a tenured professor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for the department of radiation oncology, and also the chief of the brachytherapy service. “And they are all also exploring other disease sites from pancreas to brain tumors, to advanced rectal tumors, certain breast cancers as well. So they’re exploring a whole host of various disease types where the prognosis with current treatments is generally poor and where we need better therapies.”

In addition, the company has already won this year’s Quality Innovation Prize, awarded by Laatukeskus Excellence Finland, a nonprofit organization that promotes innovation through an annual international competition. Alpha Tau came out on top in a field of 561 contestants from around the world.

The company’s potential has persuaded some important people to come on board. Mark Hager — subject of a recent profile in Forbes and, according to a 2018 listing by investment industry outlet PitchBook, one of the top unicorn investors at the angel and seed stage — has invested in Alpha Tau.

“I’m in the business of risk-taking,” says Hager. “My sector of investment is the riskiest business to be in, the riskiest part of the industry. But when something is successful, the reward outweighs the losses with other companies.

“This company was brought to me by a friend of mine, a top cancer doctor who told me that this is a game-changer. So I did my due diligence, and I said, ‘It’s worth taking a risk.’ What a great way to make money — while saving people’s lives.”