ARTICLE SUMMARY:
An Israeli start-up’s innovative solution to heal degenerated spinal discs helps patients break the cycle of pain control medication and surgery.
Degenerative disc disease (DDD) affects more than 400 million people globally, often causing debilitating pain and hindering mobility. Just in the US, it is estimated that DDD places a burden on the economy of $100-200 million, including lost days of work. Currently, about 35% of all chronic back pain is attributed to DDD, and that number is growing year over year with obesity and sedentary lifestyles as contributing factors.
Spinal disc degeneration occurs naturally with age, as disc cells die and production of proteoglycan within the extracellular matrix decreases. Proteoglycan contains negatively charged ions, which interact with positive ions outside the disc to create an electroosmotic pump effect that feeds nutrients, oxygen, and fluid into the disc during rest and pumps out metabolic waste products like cytokines and lactic acid during activity at a rate of about 25%. Without this balanced exchange, discs only replenish around 5% of their fluid content, lose their turgor and with it their shock-absorbing properties, and accumulate lactic acid with painful results.
Yuval Mandelbaum, CEO of Discure Technologies, says existing treatments for DDD, namely pain medication and invasive surgical interventions like spinal fusion or disc replacement, focus on modifying symptoms, not the disease itself. Mandelbaum, whose education in neurobiology was followed by an MBA and roles in business development in both pharma and medtech, founded Discure to introduce a solution for the root cause of DDD rather than simply for damage control after the fact. By restoring the negative charge of the disc that was neutralized by the loss of proteoglycan-producing cells, Discure’s short outpatient procedure can reestablish fluid dynamics, promote disc health, and address pain at its source.
