Newsroom – Page 20 – Australian Friends of Tel Aviv University

Tel Aviv University 1st in Israel in QS World University Ranking 2024

Written by AUFTAU on 28 June 2023. Posted in Newsroom.

Breakthrough Gene Therapy Offers Hope for Severe Developmental Epilepsy in Children

Written by AUFTAU on 27 June 2023. Posted in Newsroom.

Advancing treatment and improving quality of life.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University, among other institutions, have developed an innovative gene therapy that may help children suffering from Dravet syndrome (DS), a severe developmental epilepsy caused by a random mutation in the SCN1A gene during fetal development. DS is characterized by uncontrollable epilepsy, developmental delays, cognitive impairment, and a high risk of early death. The team’s innovative gene therapy not only improved epilepsy but also protected against early death and enhanced cognitive abilities in DS lab models.

Breakthrough Gene Therapy

The researchers are hopeful that their genetic therapy can be adapted for other genetic epilepsies and may lead to the development of similar treatments for rare diseases. The study involved injecting a virus carrying a normal SCN1A gene into the brains of DS mice. The treatment demonstrated effectiveness in various critical aspects, even after the onset of severe epilepsy. The researchers express optimism that their laboratory technique will eventually reach clinical settings and provide help to children wit this debilitating disease. They also believe that the tools developed during this research will pave the way for similar treatments for other rare diseases.

The study was led by Dr. Moran Rubinstein and graduate student Saja Fadila, along with Anat Mavashov, Marina Brusel and Karen Anderson, all from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University, and Dr. Eric Kremer, from the University of Montpellier in France. Also participating in the study were Bertrand Beucher and Iria González-Dopeso Reyes from Montpellier and other researchers from France, the USA and Spain. The research was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Dr. Moran Rubinstein

Dravet syndrome affects approximately one in 16,000 births and is considered relatively common among rare genetic diseases. Currently, there are around 70 affected children in Israel. The syndrome presents as thermally-induced seizures around six months of age, with progress to frequent spontaneous epileptic seizures and motor and cognitive developmental delays after one year.

Dr. Rubinstein highlights that existing epilepsy drugs are insufficient for children with DS, who face a significant risk of early death. The syndrome results from a genetic mutation that occurs randomly during fetal development in a gene called SCN1A and is not inherited from the parents. Unfortunately, the disease cannot be predicted or discovered during pregnancy, making early diagnosis challenging.

According to the researchers, it is customary nowadays to perform a genetic analysis for children who suffer from complex thermally-induced seizures around the age of six months. However, even if the test detects that the problem is in the SCN1A gene, the final diagnosis is often given after the epilepsy worsens, with the appearance of severe spontaneous convulsions and developmental delays. Although it is important to have an early diagnosis, diagnosis is often delayed, and most children are diagnosed only at the age of one or two years and sometimes even later.

Promising Results in Lab Models

Although genetic therapies have shown promise in DS mice and some of them are undergoing clinical trials in humans, they have only been effective when administered at very early stages, prior to symptom onset. Given the complex and invasive nature of gene therapy, it cannot be administered without a confirmed diagnosis of DS. Hence, the researchers focused on developing a treatment that could be effective after seizure onset, even at a relatively late age. Additionally, since DS involves cognitive impairments, the team aimed to alleviate both epilepsy and cognitive symptoms.

Dr. Rubinstein explains that viruses are commony used as carriers in genetic therapies to introduce normal genetic material into patients, enabling normal cellular function. For this purpose, the virus is engineered: its original genetic material is removed so it cannot cause disease or replicate itself, and instead, the relevant normal gene is packed inside. In the case of Dravet syndrome, since the SCN1A gene is very large, it was not possible to use common viruses that are usually used for this purpose and a virus capable of carrying and transferring large genes was needed. The team solved this problem by using a virus called Canine adeno virus type 2, as a carrier of the normal gene.

The carrier virus was directly injected into the brains of DS mice since its properties prevent it from crossing the blood-brain barrier. The treatment was administered to 31 mice at three weeks of age, after spontaneous convulsions had commenced (equivalent to one to two years of age in children), and to 13 mice at five weeks of age (equivalent to approximately six to eight years of age in children). The injection was performed in multiple brain areas, while an empty virus was injected into the brains of 48 control mice.

Potential for Rare Diseases

Promising results followed, with the highest efficacy observed when the treatment was administered at three weeks of age. In these mice, seizures ceased entirely within 60 hours of injection, life expectancy significantly increased, and cognitive impairment, assessed through spatial memory tests, was completely restored. Even in mice treated at five weeks of age, there was notable improvement, characterized by reduced epileptic activity and protection against thermally-induced seizures. In the control group that received the empty virus, no improvement was observed, and the mice experienced symptoms akin to untreated mice, with approximately 50% succumbing to early death due to severe epilepsy. The treatment was also applied to healthy mice without any adverse effects, demonstrating its safety.

The researchers clarify that their treatment restored normal function to damaged neurons in the brain by introducing a complete, normal gene. This approach is crucial in treating Dravet syndrome since the mutation can occur at different locations within the gene, and administering a complete gene provides a univform treatment suitable for all DS patients. Furthermore, the chosen virus infected numerous nerve cells and spread widely beyond the injection site, enhancing its effectiveness.

Dr. Rubinstein concludes that their treatment is the first proven to be effective for Dravet syndrome after the onset of spontaneous convulsions, offering improvement in cognitive function for DS mice. The team has already registered a patent, and hopes to see the treatment reach clinical settings to benefit children affected by this debilitating disease. They are also exploring its potential applicability to other genetic neurodevelopmental diseases. The developed platform represents a plug-and-play system for genetic therapies, with the possibility of incorporating different types of normal genetic material into the carrier virus for treating additional diseases in the future.

Tel Aviv University and the Sackler Family Agreed to Remove the Name Sackler from the Faculty of Medicine

Written by AUFTAU on 22 June 2023. Posted in Newsroom.

The Secret Sauce of Academic Growth

Written by AUFTAU on 22 June 2023. Posted in Newsroom.

Post-doc researchers propel cross-pollination of ideas around the globe.

How do universities worldwide expand academic ties, develop new research approaches, and tap into emerging ideas? One of the best ways to achieve these goals is to attract a talented and diverse group of recent PhD graduates for post-doctoral positions, which have long been considered as powerful engines for growth.

The main purpose of a post-doc is to develop the professional and academic skills of new PhDs, while providing them a “home” under the mentorship of an experienced researcher. The skills, experience and networking ties the young researchers gain at this stage can be key in helping them secure tenure-track faculty positions in the future. At the same time, the innovative ideas the researchers develop and pursue, and the academic ties they provide, position the hosting institution ahead of the curve in academic progress.

Recognizing the importance of supporting post-doc researchers’ foundations and private donors have created fellowship programs offering sponsored positions in various disciplines and creating a pool of talented young scientists and thinkers at the world’s top universities.

Tapping into the Expertise Network

Dr. Joshua Barrow is a post-doc scholar supported by the binational US-Israel Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program. He holds a joint appointment at Tel Aviv University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working at the intersection of nuclear and particle physics research.

Dr. Joshua Barrow hooking up cables for a new experiment at the MicroBooNE data acquisition subsystem

“In the field of particle physics specifically, collaborative work proves absolutely necessary. The experiments we build to study the most fundamental properties of matter—our colliders, accelerators, and detectors—are gigantic machines that require a team effort deep with cooperative knowledge. We bounce ideas off a lot of people and expertise is distributed throughout our large networks,” he says.

“Meeting other like-minded people allows us to fast-track the development of ideas and cross-pollinate them across disciplines.” – Dr. Joshua Barrow

Originally from Tennessee, Barrow “caught the research bug” in college, when he decided that physics was the optimal discipline that combined “philosophy, logic, and the ultimate question of how things work in the universe.” He works with Prof. Or Hen at MIT and with Dr. Adi Ashkenazi at Tel Aviv University’s Raymond & Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy. “These professors were interested in working together. I aligned with both of their research interests and provided a bridge between principal investigators in both countries,” he explains.

Barrow, who started his Zuckerman Fellowship in the fall of 2021, met the 2021 cohort of Zuckerman Scholars in Israel from other fields and universities. “Meeting other like-minded people allows us to fast-track the development of ideas and cross-pollinate them across disciplines,” he muses.

Barrow, who hopes to continue working at national laboratories or as a university professor, plans to continue collaborations with TAU into the future, wherever he lands professionally. “The problems we’re trying to solve at TAU are interesting, and the undergraduate students are very bright.”

Discovering the Local Perspective

Post-doctoral exchange is no less vital in social science than in hard sciences. Dr. Lior Birger [featured on the article’s main image] is a Bloomfield post-doc researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Bob Shapell School of Social Work. She researches best practices in working with displaced populations, refugees, and asylum seekers. As part of her PhD research, Birger conducted fieldwork in Germany, where she initiated contact with the Alice Salomon University (ASH) School of Social Work in Berlin. Thanks to this connection and the support from the German-Israeli Future Forum, Birger and her colleague at the Bob Shapell School, Dr. Nora Korin-Langer later created two joint courses in migration between ASH and TAU.

“The post-doc is a critical phase for all scholars, but for women, especially. Women and mothers face more intense challenges that require additional flexibility and compromises.” Dr. Lior Birger

“Our students, both graduate, and undergrads, Jews and Arabs, get to learn about forced migration and meet displaced populations on the ground in both countries, which helps broaden their horizons and grasp the problem as a global issue, while providing different perspectives on the challenges of social exclusion and marginalization,” Birger says. The courses include a two-day preparation in Tel Aviv and then a week in Berlin.

In September 2022, Birger started another post-doc position in Sussex, UK. “The post-doc is a critical phase for all scholars, but for women, especially. Women and mothers face more intense challenges that require additional flexibility and compromises,” she says. “Programs providing post-doc fellowships alleviate some of the financial burdens on young researchers and allow them to develop independently – providing flexibility and much-needed support at this challenging stage,” she concludes.

Nurturing Ties

Prof. Ralf Metzler, the current Chair for Theoretical Physics at the University of Potsdam, Germany, arrived in Israel in 1998 for his post-doc at Tel Aviv University after connecting with TAU chemistry professor Joseph Klafter after a seminar.

“Post-doc positions prevent you from steaming in your own juice. The best post-docs are the ones where you get really different perspectives, both in science and society,” he says.

“The best post-docs are the ones where you get really different perspectives, both in science and society.” Prof. Ralf Metzler

Metzler spent two and a half years at TAU, where he met some of his “best friends in science,” and he continues his collaboration with Israeli scientists today, and even hopes to come back to Israel to work sometime.

“I’ve become an advocate for Israel—I love the place,” he says. Metzler transfers his admiration of Israel to his students, many of whom come from countries such as China and Iran. “I hope that they go back changed, in a way,” he concludes.

Prof. Ralf Metzler (left) and Prof. Joseph Klafter

Moving Forward

Boosting the number of post-doctoral positions on campus has been one of Tel Aviv University’s organizational priorities. The number of post-doc fellows at TAU has risen 25% over the last five years to 477 fellows in 2022. 

“In contrast to science in the US and Europe, Israeli science traditionally relied on Ph.D. students and not on post-docs,” explains Prof. Yossi Yovel, the head of TAU’s Sagol School of Neuroscience and senior lecturer at The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences, who is always on the lookout for strong post-docs.

“In the past few years, however, we are observing a change in this pattern with more and more Israeli and international candidates looking to do their post-doc fellowship in Israel. The value and contribution of a strong post-doc can be instrumental in propelling progress at TAU, and in Israel, in general,” he adds.

Source: TAU Review

A Step Closer to Beating Melanoma?

Written by AUFTAU on 18 June 2023. Posted in Newsroom.

New study reveals critical insights in fight against skin cancer.

A new study conducted at Tel Aviv University and the Sheba Medical Center reveals how melanoma cancer cells affect their close environment to support their needs – by forming new lymph vessels in the dermis to go deeper into the skin and spread through the body. The researchers believe that the new discovery may contribute to the development of a vaccine against the deadly cancer.

The Hidden Mechanism

The scientific breakthrough was led by Prof. Carmit Levy of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Prof. Shoshana Greenberger from the Sheba Medical Center. The study was funded by ICRF (the Israel Cancer Research Fund) and its results appeared in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology published by Nature.

“We demonstrated for the first time that in the first stage, in the epidermis, melanoma cells secrete extracellular vesiculas called melanosomes.” – Prof. Shoshana Greenberger

The researchers (from left): Prof. Carmit Levy and Prof. Shoshana Greenberger

Melanoma, the deadliest of all skin tumors, starts with uncontrolled division of melanocyte cells in the epidermis – the top layer of the skin. In the second stage the cancer cells penetrate the dermis and metastasize through the lymphatic and blood systems.

In previous studies a dramatic rise was observed in the density of lymph vessels in the skin around the melanoma – a mechanism that was not understood by researchers until now.

“Our main research question was how melanoma impacts the formation of lymph vessels, through which it then metastasizes,” explains Prof. Greenberger. “We demonstrated for the first time that in the first stage, in the epidermis, melanoma cells secrete extracellular vesiculas called melanosomes.”

What are these vesiculas and how do they impact their environment? Examining this in human melanomas from the Pathology Institute, the researchers demonstrated that melanosomes could penetrate lymph vessels. They then examined their behavior in the environment of actual lymph vessel cells and found that here too the melanosomes penetrate the cells and give them a signal to replicate and migrate. In other words, the primary melanoma secretes extracellular vesiculas that penetrate lymph vessels and encourage the formation of more lymph vessels near the tumor, enabling the melanoma to advance to the lethal stage of metastasis.

“If we can stop the mechanisms that generate metastases in lymph nodes, we can also stop the disease from spreading” – Prof. Shoshana Greenberger

Melanoma’s Stealth Tactics

Prof. Carmit Levy adds that, “melanoma cells secrete the extracellular vesiculas, termed melanosomes, before cancer cells reach the dermis layer of the skin. These vesicles modify the dermis environment to favor cancer cells. Therefore, melanoma cells are responsible for enriching the dermis with lymph vessels, thereby preparing the substrate for their own metastasis. We have several continuing studies underway, demonstrating that the melanosomes don’t stop at the lymph cells, as they also impact the immune system, for example.”

A Promising Vaccine Hope

Since melanoma is not dangerous at the premetastatic stage, understanding the mechanism by which the metastases spread via the lymphatic and blood systems can hopefully contribute to the development of a vaccine against this deadly cancer.

“Melanoma that remains on the skin is not dangerous,” says Prof. Greenberger. “Therefore, the most promising direction for fighting melanoma is immunotherapy: developing a vaccine that will arouse the immune system to combat the melanosomes, and specifically to attack the lymphatic endothelial cells already invaded by the melanosomes. If we can stop the mechanisms that generate metastases in lymph nodes, we can also stop the disease from spreading.”

Introducing Tel Aviv University’s Student Success Center

Written by AUFTAU on 18 June 2023. Posted in Newsroom.

Student services get a welcome refresh.

Until today, TAU’s Student Services Division has been dedicated to providing students with a vital range of services including financial aid, academic counseling, tutoring, mentoring, career guidance, and psychological support. With our increasingly networked world and today’s expectations of a more seamless and hands-on experience when seeking services, the University is reinventing the Division as a much broader and expanded Student Success Center.

Unique Challenges

Israeli students have unique challenges that are atypical to their counterparts in, for example, America and Europe. Israeli students tend to begin their higher education studies 4-6 years later than other university students around the world because of the compulsory army service that starts at age 18. Added to this delay to their career trajectory are several responsibilities that students, now in their early-to-mid 20s, must assume, such as holding down 1-2 jobs to pay for their tuition and living, or even to help support family. Many students also perform military reserve duty which affects their annual school schedules. For many, it is a challenging balancing act.

“The Center is a conduit for ensuring everyone can successfully complete their degrees and pursue their professional dreams with as much support and guidance as possible.” – Prof. Drorit Neumann

A Supportive Framework

Prof. Drorit Neumann, who has been serving as the Dean of the Student Success Center since October 2021, says the goal of the Center is to “enhance the student experience by providing a streamlined, holistic support framework, one that is not entirely focused on students in need, but more so on every student, in general. These are Israel’s most precious resources – future leaders, educators, and innovators – and the Center is a conduit for ensuring everyone can successfully complete their degrees and pursue their professional dreams with as much support and guidance as possible,” Neumann says.

TAU’s entire student body of 30,000 students is eligible for assistance, with 8,000 students per year receiving need or merit-based financial aid. Through the Student Success Center, 15,000 hours of tutoring are available to any student who needs it, including designated support for students doing army reserve duty and those with learning disabilities. Students whose mother tongue is not Hebrew have access to specific programs before courses begin that include intensive Hebrew lessons and working on their soft skills and basic knowledge to ensure they have a solid educational foundation before the academic year starts. Additionally, students have access to subsidized psychotherapy and psychiatric treatment hours.

A One-Stop-Shop for Success

The new Center is envisioned as a one-stop-shop for every aspect of the student campus experience – from before students even enroll through to graduation: Helping students choose their academic direction and study program; assistance in the admission process; identifying and supporting students with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders; facilitating academic and personal mentoring; offering career guidance and job placement services in cooperation with the faculties, and much more.

“On the one hand, our student success center provides a package of services. On the other, it empowers students to be socially involved citizens in Israeli society with a thriving career.” – Prof. Drorit Neumann

A key new feature is the Center’s wide range of proactive student retention activities, which educational counselors mediate in the various faculties across campus. Counselors aim to identify students who are falling behind in their studies at as early a stage as possible, to offer them the support they need and prevent them from dropping out altogether.

Empowering Social Activism

The Center also operates a ground-breaking initiative that embeds social activism into the teaching curriculum. The initiative, named TAU Impact, offers undergraduate students accredited workshops that combine theoretical knowledge with hands-on social activity, in collaboration with NGO’s, government bodies, and the local community. The result is a critical mass of students who apply their newfound knowledge for the good of the community and serve as catalysts of positive social change.

“Our goal is to offer a one-stop, accessible space for students. On the one hand, our student success center provides a package of services. On the other, it empowers students to be socially involved citizens in Israeli society with a thriving career. This is what success means to us,” concludes Prof. Neumann.

The Life-to-Death Digital Continuum

Written by AUFTAU on 15 June 2023. Posted in Newsroom.

What happens to your Facebook profile when you pass away?

The fate of our profiles and data which remain online after we die, or our digital remains, is of increasing importance as we live more of our lives online. However, policy and social norms have not caught up to the tide of technology.

Professor Michael Birnhack from Tel Aviv University’s Buchmann Faculty of Law with Dr. Tal Morse of Hadassah Academic College researched the emerging social attitudes toward digital remains with a focus on maintenance of public image and posthumous right to privacy.

Diverse focus groups of Israelis showed that most people feel data privacy conditions should stay the same postmortem: public data such as posts and photos should remain available on a given platform, private data such as text conversations should stay private, and data shared only with specific people should continue to be accessible only to those people. Participants’ reasoning included good reputation management, consent issues with sharing data, and respect for the dead. Many expressed that even private content which would paint the deceased in a good light should not be shared.

The researchers called the phenomenon of users’ desire to maintain their privacy settings the continuity principle of digital remains. Their findings were published in the journal New Media and Society and were recently presented at an international digital remains workshop hosted at TAU by the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and the Chief Meir Shamgar Center for Digital Law and Innovation.

The Tel Aviv University Alumnus Super-Driving the Future

Written by AUFTAU on 14 June 2023. Posted in Alumni News, Newsroom.

Mobileye CEO and trailblazing technologist Prof. Amnon Shashua on what fuels his work and philanthropy.

As an undergraduate at Tel Aviv University in computer science and math, Prof. Amnon Shashua first cultivated his skills in the discipline of scientific thinking.

This approach to problem-solving was foundational to his subsequent academic career and meteoric rise as the CEO and founder of Mobileye. The driver-assist and autonomous-driving technology company is recognized as one of Israel’s biggest high-tech success stories. Its $15.3 billion acquisition by Intel in 2017 remains the largest ever for an Israeli tech company.

Alongside Mobileye, Shashua helms several other businesses based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology, including OrCam, which develops ‘smart’ assistive devices for the visually impaired; Israel’s first digital bank, One Zero; and AI21 Labs, which raised $64 million in 2022 to augment human writing with its AI systems for computer-generated text.

“Scholarships at TAU are part of promoting the economic success of Israel—academia plays a very strong role in this success.” – Prof. Amnon Shashua

TAU Alumnus to Benefactor

Parallel to his zeal for advancing technology, Shashua is passionate about advancing society. To date, he and his family have donated about $60 million to philanthropic causes, including scholarships at TAU.

Together with his wife, Anat, and three grown children, Shashua seeks to promote economic opportunity and movement toward high-tech among Israel’s underrepresented populations. These include the country’s ultra-Orthodox, Israeli-Arabs, women in STEM, and periphery communities.

“The biggest challenge we have worldwide, not just in Israel, is the widening wealth gap which threatens to cause social unrest and disorder,” he says of the impetus behind his giving. “Scholarships at TAU are part of promoting the economic success of Israel—academia plays a very strong role in this success,” he adds.

In another example of their philanthropic contributions, the Shashua family established a $35 million fund to aid some 2,000 new small businesses that suffered from the COVID-19 pandemic. Shashua hopes the so-called WE-19 program will further help even the playing field for new generations of entrepreneurs and innovators.

“AI’s ability to sense the world will change everything we know about mobility” – Prof. Amnon Shashua

AI: Full Throttle Ahead

Sitting at the intersection of academia and the business world, Shashua has a prime vantage point when it comes to the future of AI.

“It’s easy for a human to have common sense, but hard to program it into a machine,” he explains. “Now it’s starting to happen.”

He sees three primary areas where AI is expected to make leaps and bounds in the next five years: pattern recognition and sensing, or understanding the world through sensors; decision-making that affects the actions of others; and natural-language understanding which uses advanced software to enable computers to comprehend and respond to human text or speech.

When it comes to sensing and decision-making, autonomous driving is one example of AI’s progress.

“AI’s ability to sense the world will change everything we know about mobility,” Shashua says. “With autonomous vehicles, cars will become safer, there will be fewer cars on the roads, and lower costs in transporting people.”

“Even though I’m responsible for some 4,000 employees among all my businesses, I’m a scientist at my core,” – Prof. Amnon Shashua

Scientist at the Core

Shashua explains that his businesses are an expansion of his work as a professor of computer science at Hebrew University.

“I thought it would be nice to build startups because then you can solve bigger problems at a larger scale than in academia,” he says. “I never imagined it’d grow into something as big as it did.”

While he wears many professional hats, Shashua maintains an underlying passion for research.

“Even though I’m responsible for some 4,000 employees among all my businesses, I’m a scientist at my core,” he says.

Shashua continues to teach, too. Once a week, he hosts his advanced degree students for sandwiches and research sessions at his Mobileye offices in Jerusalem.

“Staying in academia keeps me sharp,” he adds, smiling.

Prof. Shashua addresses a 2018 ‘Meetings with Inspiring Alumni’ event hosted by the Tel Aviv University Alumni Organization

“Take the tough courses, take the long road, and enjoy the journey not just the destination.” – Prof. Amnon Shashua

Scholarly Foundations

From an early age, Shashua planned to pursue a scientific trajectory. “Becoming an entrepreneur surprised me,” he explains.

Shashua grew up in the Tel Aviv area. In high school, he studied in a program for gifted students in computer science. His academic journey began at Tel Aviv University in 1982, a week after his discharge from the IDF’s Armored Corp, where he’d recently served in the First Lebanon War.

“The tools I acquired through my math studies at the University really captivated me,” says Shashua of his time at TAU.

He then earned a master’s degree in computer science from the Weizmann Institute of Science and completed his PhD and postdoctoral training in fields related to brain and computational sciences at MIT.

For his pioneering contributions to the field of AI, Shashua has earned numerous accolades, most recently the 2020 Dan David Prize, headquartered at TAU, and his 2022 induction to the Automotive Hall of Fame in Michigan, US.

For students aspiring to become innovators and entrepreneurs, he encourages them to “take the tough courses, take the long road, and enjoy the journey not just the destination.”

By Julie Steigerwald-Levi

Imagining the Future Patient

Written by AUFTAU on 13 June 2023. Posted in Newsroom.

Biomedical and technological progress is at the tipping point of transforming medicine into a more precise, proactive science capable of defeating human disease.

The 21st century is revolutionizing our approach to healthcare, our understanding of the human body, and our ability to intervene in its most intricate processes. Tel Aviv University researchers are at the forefront of the advancing changes. They are collaborating with Israel’s hospitals and industry to compute a patient’s future, popularize genetic screenings, develop novel vaccines, and usher in the era of truly personalized treatment.

Transforming Sick Care into Health Care

The last decade has seen an explosion in the amount of electronic medical records. Around the world, massive databases containing comprehensive genetic and health information on hundreds of millions of people have been collected at hospitals, clinics, and data repositories. Alongside it, the revolution in AI is enabling the development of computational tools to accurately analyze this data on an unprecedented scale. At this intersection, the field of bioinformatics, which aims to solve biomedical problems by using computer science tools, is becoming increasingly important in transforming medicine from a reactive to a proactive science.

“It became obvious very fast that analyzing this data would provide fantastic insights to understanding how disease transpires and progresses, and to offer novel approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and prevention,” says Ron Shamir, Professor Emeritus of the Blavatnik School of Computer Science at the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences and the founding director of TAU’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics and Koret-Berkeley-TAU Initiative in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. The Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics brings together all bioinformatics-related research and teaching activities across campus into one multidisciplinary hub, spanning over 50 research groups and 200 students across four faculties.

“A single individual’s genome is three billion letters. Working with this amount of data feels like drinking from a fire hydrant at times” – Professor Emeritus Ron Shamir

Navigating the Data Labyrinth

Data is the backbone of all bioinformatics research but it’s not an easy work partner—sometimes its sheer amount and complexity are overwhelming. “A single individual’s genome is three billion letters. Working with this amount of data feels like drinking from a fire hydrant at times,” Shamir says.

To assist TAU researchers in addressing this problem and questions of data privacy and security, TAU recently established the Health Data Science Hub — a joint unit of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics, TAU’s AI & Data Science Center, the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, and the Biomedical Engineering Department at The Iby and Aladar Fleischman Faculty of Engineering.

“The Hub will be the center of knowledge and expertise on the various protocols needed to access large data repositories and will streamline the process for TAU scientists, which will be a great help in facilitating research,” explains current Head of Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics, Prof. Elhanan Borenstein, of the Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences and the medical faculty.

“To advance the future of medicine, we need to broaden the set of tools physicians use to understand a patient’s medical situation. Researchers and physicians need to talk to each other.” – Prof. Elhanan Borenstein

Physicians of the Future

Another long-term mission of TAU’s bioinformatic programs is to educate physicians about the potential of digital medicine.

To achieve this, TAU introduced several novel study programs in the 2022-23 academic year. First, a joint Bioinformatics-MD degree, which will arm future doctors with advanced data crunching skills. Another is a Big Data in Healthcare course offered by the Faculty of Medicine in collaboration with a governmental and industry consortium called the “8400 Health Network.” The course allows participants, many of whom are practicing physicians, to become acquainted with the opportunities now available to them in the digital healthcare realm. A total of 480 candidates applied for the 80 spots available in the course pilot.

“To advance the future of medicine, we need to broaden the set of tools physicians use to understand a patient’s medical situation. Researchers and physicians need to talk to each other,” Borenstein explains. To facilitate this, the Edmond J. Safra Center for Bioinformatics spearheads dozens of collaborative projects in clinical bioinformatics with various hospitals, programs, and academic institutions. It awarded 22 grants in the last two years for joint research projects, and an additional five collaborative grants are expected to be awarded in the coming months.

Preventive Genetics

One example of such a collaboration is Prof. Ran Elkon’s lab at the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine. Elkon’s work centers on understanding the genetic basis of widespread complex diseases, such as high blood pressure, stroke, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and even mental illnesses.

Prof. Ran Elkon

“These diseases are not considered genetic as the term is commonly understood, but it’s clear that they have a genetic component, which we call ‘predisposition,’” says Elkon. Rather than single-gene mutations, hundreds of small genetic variations influence the risk of contracting such diseases, he explains. “Each individual variant has very little effect on its own; what matters is the collective amount of such ‘risk variants’ in each individual genome.”

Elkon’s lab team recently completed a project on identifying women with an elevated genetic predisposition to breast cancer and showed that findings are applicable in Israel. Elkon is now working with Israel’s largest HMO, Clalit, to launch a clinical study for identifying such women among Clalit’s clients and offering them a more personalized breast cancer screening strategy.

“With genetic testing, we can develop more personalized, more precise approaches that will be much more effective for prevention and early detection of [breast cancer].” – Prof. Ran Elkon

The likelihood of developing breast cancer is 16 times higher for women in the top 1% genetic risk group compared to those in a low-risk group. However, today in the developed world, healthcare providers offer identical screening recommendations and coverage for women on both ends of the spectrum, Elkon explains. “We are trying to change this one-size-fits-all strategy on the ground. With genetic testing, we can develop more personalized, more precise approaches that will be much more effective for prevention and early detection of the disease,” he says.

Elkon also places a major focus on teaching ‘predictive genetics’ in his genetics classes for TAU medical students. “Genetic screening will become common practice, similar to routine blood work and other widespread check-ups, and future physicians need to be aware of this. Early detection has a major effect on prognosis and survival,” he explains.

Prof. Elkon works on trying to solve the genetic inequality dilemma, which has surfaced alongside progress in the field. Of all massive genetic breast cancer studies in the world, 90% were conducted on women of European ancestry, making findings and discoveries relevant mostly to this ethnicity. Elkon and his team were able to show that while in Israel the findings translate well to women of Ashkenazi descent, predictive performance substantively declines for individuals of other ethnicities, such as North African, Ethiopian or Druze. Elkon hopes to help come up with computational tools to successfully transfer the findings cross-ethnically. Together with physicians at the Rabin Medical Center (Beilinson Hospital) and the Clalit HMO, he’s heading research on the topic.

“We can turn a person’s skin cell into an undifferentiated stem cell, and from there, into a cell of any organ we want.” – Dr. Ben Maoz

Treatment Personalization

Prevention is the ideal alternative, but what can be done about treatment when disease does occur? On the other side of campus, in his cutting-edge lab at the Susan and Henry Samueli Engineering Building, Dr. Ben Maoz of the Fleischman Faculty of Engineering and the Sagol School of Neuroscience is revolutionizing drug development and treatment personalization.

“The drug development process hasn’t changed in 70 years. It takes a lot of time – about 20 years and $2 billion to develop an FDA-approved medication. And even then, once the drug has been approved, it is not optimal for about 75% of the people taking it, because we all have unique physiologies,” he explains.

Maoz is developing the ‘Organs-on-a-Chip’ technology that circumvents the traditional need for animal drug trials and lets researchers test new medication on something much more similar to humans than rodents—human organ models made of lab-grown cells.

Dr. Ben Maoz and his ‘Organ-on-a-Chip’ model

“It’s a process that takes up to four months overall. We can turn a person’s skin cell into an undifferentiated stem cell, and from there, into a cell of any organ we want,” Maoz explains. Once the researchers have the desired tissue with the specific DNA content they cast it into lego-like units which can be interconnected to mimic the complex physiological system of a specific patient. There is no limit on how many times this can be replicated for multiple trial-and-error runs.

“Parallel trials are especially important when there are multiple treatment options and, without personalized data, we just don’t know which one will work better. In the case of diseases such as cancer, that is crucial information,” he says.

Recently, in a move that exceeded expectations, the FDA approved the Organs-on-a-Chip approach to serve as a complementary tool for drug development, eliminating the unconditional need for animal trials. “This is a major step forward — it opens the door for expediting drug development and making it much more efficient and personalized.”

Maoz’s lab currently collaborates with numerous scientists and hospitals in Israel and the world, as well as three pharmaceutical companies that wish to use the TAU technology to test their drugs for toxicity and efficacy.

While many improvements are still needed, Maoz is certain the technology is here to stay. As for scalability, he says insurance companies will understand that channeling resources into focused, personalized testing and optimal solutions, instead of spending money on ineffective treatments and procedures, is a better and more financially viable strategy. “In the future, patients will arrive, create ‘mini-me’s-on-a-chip’ in fully robotic laboratories, and get an optimal drug for their condition,” Maoz concludes.

Harvesting Stem Cells

Recognizing the increasing demand for cellular material derived from stem cells, and addressing the lack of such facilities in Israel, TAU recently established the Stem Cell Core Lab for Regenerative Medicine, a multidisciplinary initiative of the Faculties of Medicine, Engineering, and The George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences; the Sagol Center for Regenerative Medicine; and TAU’s Vice President for R&D.

The lab already serves dozens of research groups across the TAU campus, as well as from other Israeli research institutions and commercial companies. Research based on stem cell technology advances exciting scientific breakthroughs in precision medicine and the Center is there “to help it reach stages of early clinical evaluation.”

Gene Therapy for All

“In gene therapy, the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach often works and may even be the preferred option,” says Dr. Adi Barzel from the School of Neurobiology, Biochemistry & Biophysics at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences.

Dr. Adi Barzel (center) with Dr. Erik Shifrut and Dr. Anat Globerson Levin at their lab in the Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital).

“The COVID vaccines, several cancer therapy drugs, and therapies for rare diseases, which are all already FDA-approved and used on the market, are examples of generic gene therapies that work for most,” he explains.

“Gene therapy is no longer a dream; it is a reality.” – Dr. Adi Barzel

Barzel’s team works on engineering the cells of the human immune system so that they can better combat cancer, infections, and autoimmune diseases. Last year, in a world first, they succeeded in using the gene-editing technology CRISPR to engineer type-B white blood cells with antibodies to successfully fight the HIV virus.

“For this specific drug it will take another 5 to 6 years before we get to clinical trials — these technologies take time to mature, but gene therapy is no longer a dream, it is a reality,” Barzel states.

Barzel envisions that similar to the COVID vaccine, the HIV medication would need no personal adjustment, and ideally be available “in vials at your neighborhood clinic”, and affordable to all.

He predicts that in 10 years we will see many more treatments based on genome editing, gene therapy, and immunotherapy in the fields of rare diseases, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. “We will also see many more vaccines based on the wonderful mRNA technology [the tech behind the novel COVID vaccines]. I believe all current vaccines will become mRNA-based. In addition, we will see the development of vaccines against diseases for which we currently have none, such as HIV and different types of cancer. This will take more work, but it is super exciting.”

To significantly boost the development of these therapies and make a real-world impact, Barzel heads his lab’s collaboration with the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center as part of the joint Dotan Center for Advanced Therapies. “This collaboration is crucial for our ability to take our ideas from the bench to the bedside,” he explains. The partnership fast-tracks the process of working with patient samples, allowing the researchers to get efficient results quickly and establishing an atmosphere of cooperation that translates into real progress in the clinic.

By Sveta Raskin

New Treatment Reduces ADHD Symptoms in 1 out of 3 Students

Written by AUFTAU on 13 June 2023. Posted in Newsroom.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common mental disorders affecting children. Symptoms of ADHD include inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity, and the disorder is considered a chronic and debilitating disorder that affects many aspects of an individual’s life, including academic and professional achievements, interpersonal relationships, and daily functioning.

Tel Aviv University has developed a new treatment called Computerized Progressive Attention Training (CPAT), which has shown remarkable efficacy in alleviating symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) among students. In fact, a notable 33% of students experienced significant improvements in their symptoms when undergoing CPAT, surpassing the improvement in symptoms of only 11% of the students who participated in a parallel protocol involving mindfulness training. During this mindfulness training, students practiced a specific form of meditation designed to mitigate their attention difficulties. Importantly, the benefits of CPAT also outshone those of drug treatments like Ritalin, as the improvements persisted for up to four months after the completion of the treatment protocol.

Research Challenges with Non-Medication Interventions

The study was the doctoral dissertation of Dr. Pnina Stern, under the guidance of Prof. Lilach Shalev-Mevorach of The Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of Education at Tel Aviv University. The encouraging results of the study were recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Attention Disorders.

“We developed the CPAT system years ago, and it produced good results in previous studies that we conducted, mainly in children,” explains Prof. Shalev-Mevorach. “Furthermore, in the only study that we conducted in adults with ADHD, positive findings were obtained, but without indications of ‘far transfer,’ meaning an improvement in functions for which participants were not directly trained in the treatment.”

According to Prof. Shalev-Mevorach, it is challenging for researchers to make scientific claims about the effectiveness of non-medication treatments because it is difficult to compare them to a “non-medication placebo.” In other words, when studying non-medication treatments, it’s hard to distinguish the effects of the treatment itself from other factors like the attention participants receive during training sessions or the effort they put into the research. This makes it complex to determine the true impact of non-medication interventions.

Prof. Lilach Shalev-Mevorach

Students with ADHD Enrolled

In the current study, the team of researchers tried to resolve this by employing a research design that included two control groups: a regular control group, which performed the various assessment tasks at two points in time without any intervention as part of the research (the passive control group) and a second control group that participated in mindfulness training sessions under the guidance of a professional instructor. This type of training has yielded positive results in previous studies in people with ADHD.

For the experiment 54 students, male and female, diagnosed with ADHD were recruited from Tel Aviv University and other academic institutions. The subjects were blindly divided into three groups: a zero-intervention control group, a mindfulness group and a CPAT group.

Participants in the CPAT and the Mindfulness groups attended two-hour long group meetings on the University campus once a week, where the CPAT group received Computerized Progressive Attention Training and the mindfulness group received training from a certified mindfulness instructor.

Before and after the intervention protocol, the participants of the three groups performed a comprehensive series of assessment tests: standard computerized tests to assess attention functions, behavioral assessment questionnaires (self-reported ADHD symptoms), and mindfulness questionnaires (self-reported feelings such as stress, anxiety and well-being). In addition, a novel measurement was used for this intervention study, whose participants were, as mentioned, higher-education students: they were asked to read a text from a scientific article while their eye movements were tracked by an eye-tracker. The indices produced using the eye-tracking system made it possible to identify a pattern of inattentive reading, which was used as a measure of reading efficiency in an academic context. Finally, the participants filled out a questionnaire regarding their academic difficulties.

Improvements Maintained Over Time

Prof. Shalev-Mevorach says the results were very positive: “We saw improvements in the attention functions themselves, that is, ‘near transfer,’ for example in sustained attention, the ability to remain attentive for a long period of time, and in attention control, the ability to delay a routine response. But the main thing, is that we saw significant improvements in the participants’ daily and academic functioning, such as reduced repeated reading while reading a scientific article. Furthermore, the improvements in these attention functions were connected to the reduction in behavioral symptoms of ADHD and in repetitive reading.”

“In other words, the CPAT trained the attention mechanisms themselves, and their improvement was related to the improvement achieved in behavioral symptoms and reading patterns. 33% of the participants who received the CPAT protocol showed a significant improvement in ADHD symptoms, compared to only 11% of those who underwent the mindfulness protocol. The improvements obtained were preserved in the testing that was carried out about four months after the end of the intervention protocol.”

Prof. Shalev-Mevorach notes that the effects of stimulant drugs (psychostimulants) such as Ritalin and Concerta are ‘on-off’: patients who take Ritalin daily enjoy significant improvements, but when they stop the treatment, the improvements fade, and they return to the starting point. She says the researchers wish to bring about “a profound change in basic attention functions, a change that will be significant in the long term, as an additional option alongside medication, and of course as an alternative to drug treatment in cases in which it isn’t applicable.”

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