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.
Jan 19, 2021... Prof. Karina Yaniv, Department of Biological Regulation, explains why it is so important to understand embryonic development. Across life forms, development is similar; in fact, it can be hard to distinguish between embryos from different species...
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/february-is-american-heart-month-2/
Feb 10, 2021...
Covid-19 is now, by some measures, the leading cause of death in the U.S., surpassing heart disease. Yet not only is heart disease not going away, its rates are expected to increase due to Covid; as the American Heart Association recently reported, Covid’s influence “will directly and indirectly impact rates of cardiovascular disease prevalence and deaths for years to come.”
While coronavirus research at the Weizmann Institute of Science continues full speed ahead, so does critical work on heart disease. February is American Heart Month, so we’d like to share current Weizmann Institute research on this most celebrated organ.
May 19, 2021... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—May 19, 2021—Our livers work hard to perform a significant range of activities: helping us digest food, maintaining body temperature, and serving as an important checkpoint of the immune system for everything that we eat. It is inside the liver that the unique, rich, and complex network of immune cells and pathways is set up to decide whether a food particle is harmless or a dangerous pathogen that should be neutralized and removed. The liver is, therefore, very sensitive to the food we consume, and sometimes a poor diet can induce a serious dysregulation of the immune activities within it.
Jan 05, 2022...
Scientists have been exploring the idea of growing organs outside the human body for transplantation procedures but nothing concrete has come yet. However, new research by a team from the Weizmann Institute shows that we may be drawing closer to that being possible.
The ability to culture organs in labs would make a whole lot of difference in medicine. It could make it possible to preserve millions of lives each year. Numerous people require transplantation but getting an organ is a problem.
May 25, 2022...
REHOVOT, ISRAEL – May 25 2022 – Our family origins tend to shape our future in many ways. A Weizmann Institute of Science study, published today in Nature, found that the same holds true for blood vessels. The researchers discovered blood vessels forming from unexpected progenitors and went on to show that this unusual origin determines the vessels’ future function.
“We found that blood vessels must derive from the right source in order to function properly – it’s as if they remember where they came from,” says team leader Prof. Karina Yaniv.
Aug 01, 2022... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—August 1, 2022— An egg meets a sperm – that’s a necessary first step in life’s beginnings, and it’s also a common first step in embryonic development research. But in a Weizmann Institute of Science study published today in Cell, researchers have grown synthetic embryo models of mice outside the womb by starting solely with stem cells cultured in a petri dish – that is, without the use of fertilized eggs. The method opens new horizons for studying how stem cells form various organs in the developing embryo, and may one day make it possible to grow tissues and organs for transplantation using synthetic embryo models.
Apr 23, 2023... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—April 27, 2023—To get life-giving oxygen into every cell, the human body produces two to three million oxygen-carrying red blood cells, or erythrocytes, each second – about one-quarter of all the new cells that are produced in the body at any one time. This process is controlled by the hormone erythropoietin, commonly known as EPO, which works by binding to cells in the bone marrow that are poised to become erythrocytes, promoting their proliferation. Erythropoietin was discovered decades ago, but the identity of the cells that make this hormone remained unknown – until now.
May 24, 2023...
To get life-giving oxygen into every cell, the human body produces two to three million oxygen-carrying red blood cells each second, a process controlled by the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which works by binding to cells in the bone marrow and promoting their proliferation. Discovered decades ago, the identity of the cells that make this hormone remained unknown – until now.
In a new paper, published in Nature Medicine, Weizmann scientists from Prof. Ido Amit’s lab and colleagues from Israel, Europe, and the United States have identified a rare subset of kidney cells that are the main producers of EPO in the human body, a discovery that has transformative potential for patients with anemia.
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