About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
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.
July 2018
Mountain climbers and endurance athletes are not the only ones to benefit from altitude training – that is, learning to perform well under low-oxygen conditions. It turns out that cancer-fighting cells of the immune system can also improve their performance through a cellular version of such a regimen. In a study published in Cell Reports, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have shown that the immune system’s killer T cells destroy cancerous tumors much more effectively after being starved for oxygen.
September 2017
To the list of reasons that chemotherapy sometimes does not work, we can now add one more: bacteria. In a study just published in Science, researchers describe their findings showing that certain bacteria can be found inside human pancreatic tumors. The findings further revealed that some of these bacteria contain an enzyme that inactivates a common drug used to treat various cancers, including pancreatic cancer. Working with mouse models of cancer, the scientists demonstrated how treatment with antibiotics on top of chemotherapy may be significantly superior to treatment with chemotherapy alone.
September 14, 2017
The path to understanding what goes wrong in cancer could benefit from a detour through studies of rare childhood diseases. Dr. Ayelet Erez explains that cancer generally involves dozens – if not hundreds – of mutations, and sorting out the various functions and malfunctions of each may be nearly impossible. Rare childhood diseases, in contrast, generally involve mutations to a single gene.
May 18, 2017
The fine art of mixing drug cocktails - such as for cancer treatment - is incredibly complicated, especially once you get into three or more ingredients. The numbers of possible interactions and side effects are virtually infinite. Now, a new model from the lab of Prof. Uri Alon lets scientists compare combinations of drugs to determine which work well together, and with the fewest side effects. This is a major step forward in personalized medicine.
December 07, 2016
Triple-negative breast cancer is particularly hard to treat because, as its name suggests, it lacks three receptors that usually serve as targets for anti-cancer drugs. Now, Prof. Sima Lev has identified a promising new combination therapy that not only inhibits tumor growth and survival, but gets around the problem of drug-induced resistance.
Many years ago, Prof. Michael Sela and colleagues found that antibodies inhibiting EGFR, a receptor that plays a role in cancer, have a synergistic anti-cancer effect when used with chemotherapy. That discovery has now led to three cancer-treating drugs: Erbitux®, Vectibix®, and, most recently, Portrazza™, just FDA approved for a form of lung cancer.
March 16, 2016
Three updates from the labs of the Weizmann Institute: discovery of a tumor suppressor gene behind a deadly form of melanoma; finding that lack of a certain protein leads to obesity, no matter the diet; and learning why plants “drive” with one foot on the brake rather than operate at full efficiency.
October 26, 2015
Lung cancer, the world's deadliest cancer, can be apparently successfully treated, only to return. And when it does so, it's often resistant to the drugs that worked the first time. Fortunately, Prof. Yosef Yarden has devised a novel three-pronged strategy that, in mice, kept lung cancer cells from developing resistance in the first place.
June 03, 2015
©2020 American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science