According to the folks at Itay&Beyond, this startup is the only enterprise developing brain tissue from kids’ urine cells and teaching that tissue to engage with video games for drug testing purposes. 

I am inclined to believe them wholeheartedly.

Founded in 2021, Israeli biotech startup Itay&Beyond has developed a platform that creates functional, semi-organic neural networks capable of transmitting electrical signals — essentially a “human brain on chip” — that can be used to test potential treatments for conditions like autism spectrum disorder (ASD), epilepsy, schizophrenia, depression, Alzheimer’s and bipolar disorder. 

While its technology can serve a range of demographics, Itay&Beyond is putting a specific emphasis on helping children with these conditions.

“We look at the tissue as a processor — because the human brain is an information processor,” explains Nisim Perets, CEO and cofounder of Itay&Beyond, who has extensive background in neural coding and neurological drug development.

“We ask the question whether a drug improves the tissue’s information processing, and whether that improvement compares to a control group.”

The chip-based system creates a closed loop, stimulating the organic tissue with electricity, mimicking crucial brain characteristics and functions, and recording its electrical activity.

The company has also developed methods for diagnosing neurodivergent conditions in these chip-based neural networks by teaching them how to play video games and observing their behavior. 

The company trains these neural processors like developers train modern AI systems, allowing them to distinguish between brain tissues with autism or epilepsy versus control groups.

I’ve heard of a pee-brain, but this is ridiculous

Why does Itay&Beyond use urine as a source for the stem cells that they grow into brains?

Well, according to Perets, the method is the easiest for the sensitive populations that the company works with.

“Taking biopsies from children with neurological and psychiatric disorders — especially autism or schizophrenia — is a difficult mission. There are a lot of legal issues around it, they sometimes object and it could also traumatize them,” Perets explains.

“So when you work with these sensitive communities, you want the least-invasive procedures possible.”

Perets admits that the urine-centric stem cell extraction method is less optimized than alternatives, but it’s significantly more accessible and less invasive.

Once they have the pee samples in question, they engage in advanced biochemical wizardry to reprogram the urine cells to become stem cells, which are then converted into “small and functioning brain tissue.”

At this point in our discussion, Perets gets up and leaves his desk and returns with a small medical sample container holding a few Tic Tac-shaped blobs of organic tissue. 

“These are lab grown brain tissues, and each one of them contains something like between 10 and 20 million active brain cells,” he tells me.

Future growth

The startup is currently collaborating with Hadassah University Medical Center and Schneider, the largest children’s hospital in Israel, working with volunteer patients under medical supervision. 

Each brain-on-chip is personalized to the specific patient, potentially allowing for highly targeted treatment development.

Despite facing challenges including proving the technology’s viability and navigating operations during Israel’s ongoing war — which has led to supply, funding and logistical issues — the company is raising another round of funding to scale its technology and complete key milestones.

As the global race to improve prediction methods for neurological drug efficacy continues, Itay&Beyond believes its approach offers advantages over competitors using molecular biomarkers, which Nisim describes as having “a dodgy success rate.”

It’s important to note — and Perets did — that Itay&Beyond’s innovation isn’t urine-based stem cells or growing brains on computer chips. The key to the company’s innovation is in fitting together several pre-existing pieces into a unique process that serves the exact purpose it was intended to fulfill.

A good team, a necessary innovation

This innovation addresses a critical problem in drug development: the extremely low success rate of treatments for neurological disorders when moving from preclinical (typically animal-based) testing to human clinical trials.

According to the company’s research, “in the past 20 years, only five drugs for these conditions have been approved by the FDA,” representing less than a 1% success rate despite 245 million children and adults worldwide needing better solutions.

The timing for such an innovation is particularly notable considering a recent rise in the rate of autism diagnosis worldwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of 2020, 1 in 36 children in the United States has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. This represents a 312% rise in ASD prevalence since 2000.

There’s also a personal aspect to the company’s origins. Perets was approached by a high-tech entrepreneur whose 12-year-old son, Itay, has autism. The father wanted to understand how stem cells might be used in autism treatment, inspiring the venture that would eventually bear his son’s name.

Despite operating with relatively modest funding of $3 million, Itay&Beyond has assembled a team of six: PhDs in computer science and biology along with AI experts who, according to Perets, “could easily make more money or have faster career growth, but they’ve all come to the company for the mission.”

“To work on this kind of project is mind-blowing for a scientist with curiosity, and they come with the motivation to change the world, to change the way that we develop treatments and to get better treatments to clinics faster.”

For more information, click here.