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.
Feb 14, 2022... Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the world, surpassing all cancers combined. One of the major difficulties in coming up with new therapies lies in translating basic research findings, typically obtained with mice, into a treatment that works in humans. This gap can be filled by experimenting on pigs, whose hearts beat at a rhythm similar to that of humans and otherwise provide a faithful model – both size-wise and physiologically – of human cardiovascular function.
Feb 27, 2022...
Israeli scientists say they may be able to cut the risk of heart attack by rebalancing gut bacteria — using capsules containing germs collected from excrement.
Just hours after each of their 200 subjects had a heart attack, researchers studied the bacteria balance in the patients’ guts and compared results to those of a control group. They say it was the largest and most in-depth study on the microbiome in heart patients — and that it threw up a striking pattern that hasn’t been documented until now.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/treating-a-heart-attack-before-it-happens/
Mar 08, 2023...
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—March 8, 2023— Imagine getting treatment for a perfectly healthy young heart that would allow it to recover from an otherwise devastating injury decades later.
If you think this prospect seems farfetched, you are not alone. Until recently, Prof. Eldad Tzahor, whose lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science studies heart tissue regeneration, had also considered it science fiction. After all, cardiovascular diseases, which are humanity’s leading cause of death, aren’t generally perceived as something one can prepare for through preventive treatment. But Tzahor and researchers in his lab have now activated a cellular mechanism in healthy mouse hearts that makes these mice resilient to future heart attacks – even when they occur months later.