Dorit Arad, MND, and the business of diagnostic tests for viral pandemics

She founded MND in May 2004. In 2006, after two years with Yozmot, Arad left the incubator to strike out on her own. She continued to fund the company with her own money, and the company also began paid collaborative work with a French company, BMD. The two companies created a diagnosis kit for detecting respiratory diseases such as bronchitis, pneumonia, sinusitis, and ear infections at one go. In July 2007 the company raised $4.7 million in their first financing round from a group of private investors from Switzerland, headed by the Dreyfus and Merilous families. The investors said they plan to invest more in the company, which is moving to the Weizmann Science Park in Rehovot.

Note that Arad, in 2004, has also founded another company, NLC Pharma, based in the United States (well, based in Israel but registered in Delaware). This company helps Arad pursue the other aspect of her scientific work: Treatment. “Using the same research from MND we are developing anti-viral drugs,” says Arad. “We already have lead components that are very effective for SARS, the common cold, and foot and mouth disease.” The company is now at the preclinical stage, but Arad says she expects to be able to reach the market with treatments quickly using FDA shortcuts once clinical trials are underway. “There is nothing like this on the market,” she explains. “Our aim is to have ready bullets of treatments for all pandemic families of diseases.”

Indeed, Arad’s original goal was to develop antiviral treatments only, but she discovered that viral diagnosis was a lucrative and important field in its own right. Globally, the diagnostic market is estimated at $40 billion annually. “In fact, MND was a byproduct of my real research, but diagnosis has turned out to be much bigger than I thought it would be at the start. There is a real gap in the market,” Arad says. Her long-term goal is to be able to do it all — to prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious diseases. “Our mission is to be ready for any new viral epidemic,” she says. “The damage caused by the fear of SARS was 10 times greater than the economic damage caused by the tsunami in 2004. We are fighting against fear. We fear things we cannot see and cannot protect ourselves from. We are targeting that fear, making the unknown, known.”