News Releases
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Improving Health & Medicine
Looking in Cellular Trash Cans
If we really want to know how our body’s cells work – or don’t work, in the case of disease – we might need to look beyond our genes and even beyond the proteins the genes are made of. We may need to start going through the cellular “trash.” The group of Dr. Yifat Merbl of the Weizmann Institute of Science developed a system to do just that, finding that “cellular dumpster-diving” contains information about the cell’s function that is not otherwise seen. The group applied their new approach to profiling the immune cells of patients with an autoimmune disorder, discovering clear evidence of a signature pattern that provides a new way of thinking about the underlying causes of the disease. Furthermore, in the future, this may lead to better diagnostic techniques.
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Fighting Cancer
Toward an “Ultra-Personalized” Therapy for Melanoma
With new immunotherapy treatments for melanoma, recovery rates have risen dramatically – in some cases to around 50%. But they could be much higher. A new study led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science showed, in lab dishes and animal studies, that a highly personalized approach could help the immune cells improve their ability to recognize the cancer and kill it. The results of this study were published in Cancer Discovery.
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Improving Health & Medicine
An Inside Look at Probiotics
Every day, millions of people take probiotics – preparations containing live bacteria that are meant to fortify their immune systems, prevent disease, or repair the adverse effects of antibiotics. Yet the benefits of probiotics have not really been medically proven. It is not even clear if probiotic bacteria really colonize the digestive tract or, if they do, what effects the colonies have on humans and their microbiomes – the native bacteria in their guts. Now, in two back-to-back reports published in Cell, researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science show – in both mice and in humans – that a preparation of 11 strains of the most widely used probiotic families may sometimes be less than beneficial for the user and their microbiome.
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Advancing Technology
Light Exchange
The quantum computers of the future will be able to perform computations that cannot be done on today’s computers. These may likely include the ability to crack the encryption that is currently used for secure electronic transactions, as well as the means to efficiently solve unwieldy problems in which the number of possible solutions increases exponentially. Research in the quantum optics lab of Prof. Barak Dayan at the Weizmann Institute of Science may be bringing such computers one step closer by providing the “quantum gates” required for communication within and between such quantum computers.
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Fighting Cancer
Disrupted Nitrogen Metabolism Might Spell Cancer
When the body makes use of nitrogen, it generates from the leftovers a nitrogenous waste substance called urea in a chain of biochemical reactions that take place in the liver, which are known as the urea cycle. As a result of this cycle, urea is expelled into the bloodstream, and is later excreted from the body in the urine. In previous research, Dr. Ayelet Erez of Weizmann’s Department of Biological Regulation showed that one of the enzymes in the urea cycle has been inactivated within many cancerous tumors, thus increasing the availability of nitrogen for the synthesis of an organic substance called pyrimidine which, in turn, supports RNA and DNA synthesis and cancerous growth.
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Advancing Technology
An Algorithm That Rivals Experts’ Ultrasound Skills Could Save Lives
Utrasound equipment has shrunk in both size and price in recent years – so much so that it is now standard in hospitals and clinics all over the world. But today’s ultrasound still requires a highly trained expert to acquire the image and interpret the results, and this has prevented its use in certain settings – for example, in urgent care. In a joint venture they call On-Sight, computer scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science and a cardiologist at the New York University School of Medicine have teamed up to develop an automated system that guides the operator in acquiring the images and then accurately interprets the results for physicians. This venture was recently awarded first place in the third Echovation Challenge of the American Society of Echocardiography.
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Advancing Technology
Freezing Fly Eggs for the Future
The three fresh Weizmann Institute of Science graduates – Drs. Yuval Gilad, Idan Alyagor, and Yoav Politi – named their company FREEZEM. As the name suggests, they are developing a way to cryogenically freeze the fly eggs so that they remain viable. The technology for freezing fly eggs, they say, is different from that used to freeze human ova or bacteria, and they are the first to offer this development.
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David Doneson to Lead American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science
The Board of Directors of the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science has unanimously elected David Doneson to be the organization’s next CEO, effective September 4, 2018. Mr. Doneson will succeed Marshall S. Levin, who has served as CEO since 2008.
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Fighting Cancer
Combined Approach Offers Hope to Lung Cancer Patients Who Become Resistant to Drugs
New-generation lung cancer drugs have been effective in a large number of patients, but within about a year, most tend to develop resistance to the therapy. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in collaboration with physicians, have conducted a study in mice in which they used existing drugs in a new combination to help crush potential treatment resistance. Their findings were published recently in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
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Exploring the Physical World
A Century-Old Model for the Origin of Life Gets Significant Substantiation
In 1924, Russian biochemist Alexander Oparin claimed that life on Earth developed through gradual chemical changes of organic molecules in the “primordial soup” that likely existed here four billion years ago. In his view, the complex combination of lifeless molecules, joining forces within small oily droplets, could assume life faculties – self-replication, selection, and evolution. These ideas were received with considerable doubt, which remains today.
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Fighting Cancer
Switching Sides: The Betrayal of an Anti-Cancer Gene
It doesn’t often happen that army generals switch sides in the middle of a war, but when cancer is attacking, it may cause even a gene that acts as the body’s master defender to change allegiance. As reported recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have discovered that this gene’s betrayal can occur in more ways than previously appreciated.
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Maggie Howard Appointed Associate Executive Director, Southern California Region
The American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science announced that Maggie Howard has been appointed as Associate Executive Director of its Southern California Region. Ms. Howard will play a critical role in advancing local philanthropic efforts to support the Weizmann Institute, a top-ranking, multidisciplinary research institution located in Rehovot, Israel.
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Enriching Education
The Weizmann Institute of Science is Ninth in the World in Research Quality
The Weizmann Institute of Science has placed ninth in an international ranking of research quality. This is the second time that the Institute has ranked in the top 10 best research institutes in the world. (The Institute placed 10th in the 2015 ranking.) The assessment comes from the annual Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) Leiden Ranking, Leiden University, the Netherlands.
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Exploring the Physical World
XENON1T Team Sets Limits
Dr. Ran Budnik and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science joined 165 researchers from 27 research institutes around the world working on the XENON1T experiment. This experiment is the most sensitive by far to search for dark matter, and the results they reported this week set a stringent limit on the possible mass of particles that could make up the elusive dark matter. Following these results, based on research that utilized a tank containing over a ton of liquid xenon and on data collected for almost a year, the scientists are planning an even larger, more-sensitive experiment – XENONnT – for 2019.
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Improving Health & Medicine
Body Knows Best: A Natural Healing Mechanism for Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Treating inflammatory diseases of the bowel is extremely challenging: genes, gut microbes, and disrupted immune function all contribute. Weizmann Institute of Science researchers are proposing a way around this complexity. In a study in mice, published in Cell Reports, they have found a way to trigger a natural defense mechanism that prompts the body itself to alleviate intestinal inflammation.
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Enriching Education
Passing it On, Thanks to PERACH
In the course of writing his doctoral thesis, Emanuel (Emil) Eidin, a student in the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Science Teaching, started thinking about the people he would like to thank in the acknowledgements section. He decided that some of the people to whom gratitude was due were the PERACH mentors who had helped him as a child.
