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About two weeks after a Russian drone struck the cover built to contain radiation at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Israeli biotech firm Pluri, a developer of placenta-based cell technology, landed an agreement to help Ukraine develop an emergency response to life-threatening radiation sickness in case of a radiological event.
The nearly three-year war between Russia and Ukraine has underscored the ever-rising threat of nuclear fallout amid repeated shelling of a nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons.
Last month, Haifa-based Pluri (formerly Pluristem) entered into an exclusive collaboration with Ukrainian umbilical cord blood bank Hemafund to stockpile and distribute its placental expanded cell therapy, PLX-R18, as a potential treatment for life-threatening radiation sickness.
Pluri was founded in 2001 by Technion alumnus Shai Meretzki, who made use of a stem cell patent developed during his Ph.D. studies in the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine under the supervision of Dr. Shosh Merchav, together with researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science.