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.
Aug 02, 2019...
JERUSALEM, Aug. 1 (Xinhua) – Israeli scientists have discovered when and where mistakes occur in the cellular manufacture of proteins, which may help with Alzheimer’s and cancer researches, the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS) reported Thursday.
The researchers not only succeeded in measuring the rate of such mistakes, but also revealed that the DNA contains a “mistake manual” of sorts that dictates where these mistakes need to be avoided and where they may be tolerated or even welcome.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/the-next-agricultural-revolution-is-here/
Sep 19, 2019...
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Uplands Farm has a history of ground-breaking plant research and environmental activism.
As a growing population and climate change threaten food security, researchers around the world are working to overcome the challenges that threaten the dietary needs of humans and livestock. A pair of scientists is now making the case that the knowledge and tools exist to facilitate the next agricultural revolution we so desperately need.
Nov 04, 2019... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—November 4, 2019—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.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/scientists-map-mouse-personality/
Nov 07, 2019...
Some mice are curious and explore every new hiding place. Others are more anxious and prefer to stay in their nest. ©MPI f. Molecular Genetics
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany, together with colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have developed a computational method to objectively measure the personality of mice living in a semi-natural, group environment.
Jan 27, 2020...
When Weizmann Institute of Science Prof. Rivka Dikstein set out to study a gene regulating inflammation, she had no idea she’d find a promising route to developing a drug for Huntington’s disease.
Dikstein’s biomolecular sciences team focused on a gene called Spt5, which regulates how DNA is copied for manufacturing proteins. The scientists discovered that Spt5 plays a key role in inflammation.
Jul 16, 2020... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—July 16, 2020—Choosing the right drug for each cancer patient is key to successful treatment, but physicians currently have few reliable pointers to guide them in designing treatment protocols. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have now developed a new method for selecting the best drug therapy for a given tumor, based on assigning scores to the cells’ internal messaging activities. In addition to helping physicians choose from a list of existing treatments, the method can help identify new molecular targets for the development of future drugs. In fact, the researchers have already used it to single out a gene that can be targeted for effectively treating breast cancers with a BRCA mutation. The study was recently published in Nature Communications.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/the-gender-of-medication/
Jul 29, 2020...
You wouldn’t give a toddler the same dose of ibuprofen that you, an adult – let’s assume you’re a woman – take. Likewise, should your dose be the same as a man’s?
It’s so clear when you take a moment to consider it; in the article “Should medicine be gendered?” (which also cites Weizmann Institute research), the BBC’s Science Focus nutshells it for us: “Men and women have completely different biologies, and yet doctors prescribe the same drugs and doses to everyone, regardless of sex.”
Aug 13, 2020... Prof. Eran Hornstein, a member of the steering committee for Weizmann’s new Institute for Brain and Neural Sciences, discusses this important flagship project, which will bring together experts in multiple disciplines to understand mental illness, advance treatments for diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and much more. He explains why Weizmann is in an ideal position to uncover the brain's mysteries, with more than 40 internationally renowned research groups dedicated to addressing the most pressing topics in neuroscience.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/blog/in-celebration-of-crispr/
Oct 29, 2020...
In February 2017, in Boston for the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS’s) annual conference, The Curiosity Review snagged a chair in a packed ballroom of attendees.
The main attraction was Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier. Then a rock star to scientists, today she is headline news; along with her longtime collaborator, Dr. Jennifer Doudna, Charpentier just received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of CRISPR. The method, which stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” enables scientists to edit DNA.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/the-cell-whisperer/
Nov 21, 2020... These are coronavirus days, and very few people can be seen in the narrow corridors of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. We’re in the molecular immunology laboratory, located in one of the institute’s old buildings. It’s a simple place, the instruments are banal and dull. It looks like any lab in the world, one of thousands. But a miracle is occurring between the walls here. In the small details. The smallest.
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