News Releases
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Fighting Cancer
Predicting Immunotherapy Success
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—February 18, 2020—One of the frustrations with anti-cancer therapy is that no one drug fits all: Most work well in some people but have little effect in other patients with the same type of cancer. This is as true of the newer immunotherapy treatments as it is of older types of chemotherapy. Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have now identified new markers that can help predict which patients have a better chance for a positive response to immunotherapy treatments. Their findings were reported in Nature Communications.
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Culture & Community
New Leadership at American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science
NEW YORK, NY—January 22, 2020—The American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science has announced that David Teplow of Boston and Dr. Gladys Monroy of the Bay Area were elected National Chair and President, respectively, by the Board of Directors at its annual meeting. Mr. Teplow succeeds outgoing National Chair Ellen Merlo of New York, who has held the position since 2013. Dr. Monroy takes the helm from Mr. Teplow, who served as President since 2017.
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Improving Health & Medicine
New Algorithm Predicts Gestational Diabetes
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—January 13, 2020—A new computer algorithm enables prediction, in the early stages of pregnancy or even before pregnancy has occurred, of which women are at a high risk of gestational diabetes. Conducted by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, the study was reported in Nature Medicine. The scientists analyzed data on nearly 600,000 pregnancies available from Israel’s largest health organization, Clalit Health Services. It may be possible, based on these predictions, to prevent gestational diabetes using nutritional and lifestyle changes.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Decoy Molecule Neutralizes a Range of Viruses
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—January 7, 2020—A host of disease-causing viruses called arenaviruses lurk in animal populations in various parts of the world, sometimes crossing over into humans. When they do cross over, they can be lethal, and only very few treatments exist. Researchers led by scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now devised a clever decoy for these viruses that may keep them from spreading in the body.
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Advancing Technology
For the First Time: Electrons are Imaged Flowing Like Water
We often speak of electrons “flowing” through materials, but in fact, they do not normally move like a liquid. However, such “hydrodynamic” electron flow had long been predicted – and now, Weizmann Institute of Science physicists have managed, with the help of a unique technique, to image electrons flowing similarly to how water moves through a pipe. This is the first time such “liquid electron flow” has been visualized, and it has vital implications for future electronic devices.
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Culture & Community
The 11th President of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Four New Vice Presidents Take Office
The 11th president of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Prof. Alon Chen, took office on December 1, joined by four new vice presidents. “The Weizmann Institute is a world-leading research institution that generates transformative knowledge and educates the scientists of tomorrow,” said Prof. Chen in his recent speech before the International Board at its annual meeting. “Our alumni embark on careers in high-tech and biotech and in academia, providing the foundations of Israel’s booming economy, just as Chaim Weizmann envisioned. As we reach the milestone of 70 years since the establishment of the Weizmann Institute, I believe it’s safe to say that we have indeed lived up to Chaim Weizmann’s expectations. Perhaps we have even exceeded them.” The full text of Prof. Alon’s speech can be found here. =
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Protecting Our Planet
The Greenest Diet: Bacteria Switch to Eating Carbon Dioxide
Bacteria in the lab of Prof. Ron Milo of the Weizmann Institute of Science have not just sworn off sugar – they have stopped eating all of their normal solid food, existing instead on carbon dioxide (CO2) from their environment. That is, they were able to build all of their biomass from air. This feat, which involved nearly a decade of rational design, genetic engineering, and a sped-up version of evolution in the lab, was reported in Cell. The findings point to means of developing, in the future, carbon-neutral fuels.
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Improving Health & Medicine
An Exception to the Rule: An Intact Sense of Smell Without a Crucial Olfactory Brain Structure
Is a pair of brain structures called the olfactory bulbs, which are said to encode our sense of smell, necessary? That is, are they essential to the existence of this sense? Weizmann Institute of Science researchers recently showed that some humans can smell just fine, thank you, without said bulbs. Their finding – that around 0.6% of women, and more specifically, up to 4% of left-handed women, have completely intact senses of smell despite having no olfactory bulbs in their brains – calls into question the accepted notion that this structure is absolutely necessary for the act of smelling. The findings of this research, which were published in Neuron, could shake up certain conventional theories that describe the workings of our sense of smell.
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Improving Health & Medicine
For the First Time: A Method for Measuring Animal Personality
We might refer to someone’s personality as “mousy,” but in truth, mice have a range of personalities nearly as great as our own. Prof. Alon Chen and members of two groups he heads – one in the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Neurobiology and one in the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany – decided to explore personality specifically in mice. This would enable the scientists to develop a set of objective measurements for this highly slippery concept. A quantitative understanding of the traits that make each animal an individual might help answer some of the open questions in science concerning the connections between genes and behavior. The findings of this research were published in Nature Neuroscience.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Converging Solutions: Artificial Networks Shed Light on Human Face Recognition
Our brains are so primed to recognize faces – or to tell people apart – that we rarely even stop to think about it, but what happens in the brain when it engages in such recognition is still far from understood. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have shed new light on this issue. They found a striking similarity between the way in which faces are encoded in the brain and successfully performing artificial intelligence (AI) systems known as deep neural networks.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Ebola Antibodies at Work
The glycoprotein spike complex of the Ebola virus bound by a neutralizing antibody isolated from a vaccinated individual. Surface representations in grey and pink show the two distinct submits that make the trimeric Ebola spike complex. The heavy and light chains of the neutralizing antibody are shown as blue and green ribbons, respectively. The antibody neutralizes this complex by stapling two adjacent subunits and preventing conformational changes needed by the virus to enter the host cell
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Fighting Cancer
A New Route to Blocking Children’s Bone Cancer
Ewing sarcoma is a bone cancer that appears mainly in teenagers. Caused by a single defective gene, once it spreads to distant organs it is hard to treat. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now discovered molecular interactions underlying Ewing sarcomas and proposed a potential treatment that has shown promise in a study in mice. These findings were published in Cell Reports.
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Fighting Cancer
Cancer Protocols: A New Approach to Predicting Treatment Outcomes
Diversity – at least among cancer cells – is not a good thing. Now, research from the Weizmann Institute of Science shows that in melanoma, tumors with cells that have differentiated into more diverse subtypes are less likely to be affected by the immune system, thus reducing the chance that immunotherapy will be effective. The findings of this research, which were published in Cell, may provide better tools for designing personalized protocols for cancer patients, as well as pointing toward new avenues of research into anti-cancer vaccines.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Firework Memories
Extraterrestrial scientists landing in a football stadium would be struck by the sight of the crowd suddenly standing up and shouting in unison. In a similar manner, since the 1990s, researchers have observed a special pattern of neuronal activity in rodents: tens of thousands of nerve cells firing in unison in a part of the brain called the hippocampus. But, like alien scientists, the researchers have not been able to understand the “language” of the rodents’ minds when these mysterious synchronous bursts occurred. Recently, however, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers succeeded in recording these rapid bursts of activity – called “hippocampal ripples” – in the human brain, and were able to demonstrate their importance as a neuronal mechanism underlying the engraving of new memories and their subsequent recall. These findings appeared in Science.
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Exploring the Physical World
Next-Gen Israeli Satellite to Seek Out Cosmic Explosions and Black Holes
Weighing in at just about 160 kg (around 353 lbs), a new type of scientific satellite is planned to be built in Israel over the next four years, with a projected launch date of 2023. The satellite, known as ULTRASAT, will carry a telescope designed to observe the universe as it has never been seen before. The satellite will operate in a range of light that is normally invisible to us – ultraviolet, or UV – and have a very large field of view.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Gut Microbes May Affect the Course of ALS
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have shown in mice that intestinal microbes, collectively termed the gut microbiome, may affect the course of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. As reported in Nature, progression of an ALS-like disease was slowed after the mice received certain strains of gut microbes or substances known to be secreted by these microbes. Preliminary results suggest that the findings on the regulatory function of the microbiome may be applicable to human patients with ALS.
