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 future of humanity.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/to-stop-cancer-block-its-messages/
Mar 30, 2015... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—March 30, 2015—The average living cell needs communication skills: It must transmit a constant stream of messages quickly and efficiently from its outer walls to the inner nucleus, where most of the day-to-day decisions are made. But this rapid, long-distance communication system leaves itself open to mutations that can give rise to a “spam attack” that promotes cancer. Prof. Rony Seger of the Department of Biological Regulation and his team have now proposed a method of shutting off the overflow of information before it can get to the nucleus. If the initial promising results hold up, the method could be used to treat a number of different cancers – especially several that develop resistance to current treatments – and might possibly induce fewer side effects than those treatments do. These findings appeared on March 30, 2015, in Nature Communications.
Feb 04, 2019...
We treasure our hearts: we fill them with love, soothe them when they ache, and keep them powerful with diet and exercise. But sometimes, no matter what, our hearts are affected by illness and disease – and that’s where science can help.
It’s American Heart Month, the perfect time to share with you some of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s remarkable research on the heart. After all, this affects all of us: as the Centers for Disease Control says, heart problems are both common and varied, affect people of all ages, and strike equally across gender and economic borders.
Jun 27, 2016...
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—June 27, 2016—Disrupted fetal immune system development, such as that caused by viral infection in the mother, may be a key factor in the later appearance of certain neurodevelopmental disorders. This finding emerges from a Weizmann Institute study published in Science on June 23.
The study may explain, among other things, how the mother’s infection with the cytomegalovirus (CMV) during pregnancy, which affects her own and her fetus’s immune system, increases the risk that her offspring will develop autism or schizophrenia, sometimes years later. This increased risk of neurodevelopmental diseases was discovered many years ago in epidemiological studies and confirmed in mouse models, and now the Weizmann study – led by Dr. Ido Amit of the Department of Immunology and Prof. Michal Schwartz of the Department of Neurobiology – provides a possible explanation for this increase on the cellular and the mechanistic molecular levels.
Jul 20, 2018...
JERUSALEM, July 19 (Xinhua) — An Israeli new study on the complexity of the structure of a fish’s eye could help treat kidney stones and gout disease, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel said Thursday.
The study focused on the sophisticated vision systems and the great precision and complexity of a zebrafish’s eye iris.
The researchers wanted to know how the fish’s eye could block unwanted light, like the humans’, and how it can return the light as a mirror to create camouflage.
Apr 23, 2018...
Breast cancer cells in culture form tubelike interconnections. In this image, payloads of molecules (inside blue circles) can be seen moving along these membranous nanotubes and microtubes, illustrating how they might be transmitted to a cell in need of them. Such connections may help cancer cells share their resistance to therapeutic drugs. Ian Smith
When the physician and scientist Emil Lou was an oncology fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center about a decade ago, he was regularly troubled by the sight of something small but unidentifiable in his cancer-cell cultures. Looking through the microscope, he said, he “kept finding these long, thin translucent lines,” about 50 nanometers wide and 150 to 200 microns long, extending between cells in the culture. He called on the world-class cell biologists in his building to explain these observations, but nobody was sure what they were looking at. Finally, after delving into the literature, Lou realized that the lines matched what Hans-Hermann Gerdes’ group at the University of Heidelberg had described as “nanotubular highways” or “tunneling nanotubes” (TNTs) in a 2004 paper in Science.
Oct 10, 2015...
© Photo courtesy of Flickr, Judit Klein. Blue cheese is among the many foods that may help repair circadian clocks and lower the risk of age-related diseases.
Imagine a dietary supplement that could slow down age-related diseases and possibly lengthen the life humans live. Well, polyamines, compounds found abundantly in nearly every living cell, may have the power to do this. They play an intrinsic role in the body’s internal clock and regulate cell growth and death. Researchers discovered that as mice aged, their levels of polyamines began to drop, slowing down the body clock’s natural cycle (roughly 24 hours), and increasing their susceptibility to disease. The findings, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, explain that by eating polyamines, we may be able to stave off disease and even increase longevity.
Sep 26, 2011... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—September 26, 2011—The fact that certain smells cause us pleasure or disgust would seem to be a matter of personal taste. But new research at the Weizmann Institute of Science shows that odors can be rated on a scale of pleasantness, and this turns out to be an organizing principle for the way we experience smell. The findings, which appeared today in Nature Neuroscience, reveal a correlation between the response of certain nerves to particular scents and the pleasantness of those scents. Based on this correlation, the researchers could tell by measuring the nerve responses whether a subject found a smell pleasant or unpleasant.
Nov 30, 2016... Here’s a reason not to peel tomatoes: A new method of plant analysis, developed at the Weizmann Institute of Science, has identified healthful antioxidants in tomato skins. In fact, as reported recently in Nature Communications, the new method reveals that biologically active plant substances typically associated with particular plant species – including those providing health benefits – are much more prevalent across the plant kingdom than was previously thought.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/all-too-human/
Jan 22, 2019...
The tradeoff shown in human brains (top) and monkey brains (bottom). The more evolutionarily advanced, the more efficient and the less robust each area proved to be.
Prof. Rony Paz of the Weizmann Institute of Science suggests that our brains are like modern washing machines – evolved to have the latest sophisticated programming, but more vulnerable to breakdown and prone to develop costly disorders. He and a group of researchers recently conducted experiments comparing the efficiency of the neural code in non-human and human primates and found that, as the neural code gets more efficient, the robustness that prevents errors is reduced. Their findings, which appeared in Cell, may help to explain why disorders as ADHD, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and even autism are common in humans.
Jul 23, 2019...
Image by Tashatuvango via Shutterstock.com
A trailblazing study by Israeli researchers suggests that intestinal microbes may have a direct effect on the course of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the incurable, fatal neurodegenerative disease also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease that affected physicist Stephen Hawking.
Published today in Nature, the study by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science revealed that the progression of an ALS-like disease in lab mice was slowed after the mice received certain strains of gut microbes or substances known to be secreted by these microbes.
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