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Special project: The Israeli scientists who stunned the world with 5 groundbreaking studies

Science fiction, miracle, the act of creation - each of these words describes what is happening right now in research institutes and laboratories in Israel โ€ข Dozens of groundbreaking and life changing studies, of which we chose five and talked to the scientists behind them.


Breakthrough: A pill of gut bacteria to prevent obesity

Prof. Iris Shai, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben Gurion University: "What bothered me was how we overcome the fact that in half a year of healthy nutrition we reach our maximum and hence it works less well for us. What are we doing here? What can we leverage from this optimal half year? "And we got the bacteria." "We have found that we can improve our own gut bacteria, the macro-bio, with the help of a green diet and later re-implant the bacterial memory and prevent re-weight gain," she said.

Breakthrough: Growing embryos outside the uterus in the processor

Prof. Yaakov Hanna, head of the Stem Cell Laboratory at the Weizmann Institute: "We recently developed a method to grow precocious embryos outside the uterus." I did not expect it to work, I said it would be fine if it did not work. But we are of course greedy scientists, every time we progress a bit then say we want even more. We can see how a fetus transforms its shape from a sphere of cells that is shapeless, within 5 days, to form intact with all its organs. We can also control his environment as he grows up. " The second implication is whether it can work or facilitate or replace the growth of mammals outside the uterus. "

Breakthrough: Edible Steak in a Laboratory Using 3D Bio-Printing with Biological Ink

Prof. Shulamit Levenberg, Faculty of Biomedical Engineering at the Technion: "We have actually worked for many years in the field of tissue engineering for medical purposes - whether it is muscle tissue, or heart muscle or bone tissue, to replace and repair damaged tissue in the body. This technological development of cell growth "In three dimensions, it also brought us the opportunity to come and produce muscle tissue that is simply from cow cells and can be used for food."

Breakthrough: An innovative blood test that will change the way diseases are diagnosed

Dr. Israa Sharqiya and Dr. Ronen Sadeh, Department of Biological Chemistry at the Institute of Life Sciences of the Hebrew University: "We developed a blood test that can diagnose diseases, and this year the article was published and we are now trying to get it out of the lab and make it accessible to doctors and patients. "Healthy, they will take a blood test from him, this blood test will reach our laboratories and we will be able to tell him that he is fine or that we may see a development of some process."

Breakthrough: Remedies without the use of animals by human organ technology on a chip

Prof. Ya'akov Nahmias, Head of the Center for Bioengineering at the Hebrew University: "As much as I love animals and I am really dedicated to reducing experiments and working with animals - that is not the reason I do it. The reason I wake up in the morning to work is because I think of using my husband Life is just not efficient anymore and we actually have to move on to the 21st century and beyond. "


 
Israelโ€™s SpaceIL Gets $70M Boost To Launch 2nd Moon Mission In 2024

Israelโ€™s second planned moon mission is quickly shaping up to become reality. SpaceIL,
the non-profit organization behind Israelโ€™s original initiative to land an unmanned spacecraft on the moon, which it did in 2019 with the ill-fated Beresheet (โ€œGenesisโ€ in Hebrew) lander, announced on Sunday that it raised $70 million from a group of prominent philanthropists and investors to launch Beresheet 2, a follow-up space mission set for 2024.

The group includes the Khan Foundation by South African-Israeli philanthropist Morris Khan, who also backed the first moon mission, the Patrick and Lina Drahi foundation set up by Drahi, a French-Israeli business magnate the Moshal Space Foundation in partnership with leading Israeli VC firm Entrรฉe Capital.

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Sunny Eilat and Nice join forces to become smart cities

Israel and Franceโ€™s top seaside destinations come together to find technology-based solutions for issues of infrastructure, energy and tourism.


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The southern city of Eilat and the French Riviera city of Nice have so much in common: sun, sea, loads of French tourists and, apparently, common municipal problems. So much so, that the two vacation destinations teamed up and launched a joint program to tackle the latter.

The two-year program will see a 10 member team from each city search for technology-based solutions to challenges in the field of smart cities, including issues of infrastructure, transportation, energy, community services and tourism.

It will be run by the Eilat Tech Center thatโ€™s backed by Arieli Capital, in collaboration with Niceโ€™s innovation hub.

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TAU Researchersโ€™ Discovery of Immune Systemโ€™s โ€˜Double Agentsโ€™ May Help Win War on Cancer

A new Tel Aviv University study examined for the first time the development of a glioblastoma cancerous tumor in animal models with a normal immune system, to best simulate the development of the tumor in humans. The findings of the study showed that there are immune system cells that, even though their primary function is to attack and kill the cancer cells, actually act as โ€œdouble agentsโ€ that increase and intensify the aggressiveness and threat of the tumor.

The study was led by Dr. Dinorah Friedmann-Morvinski of the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and Sagol School of Neuroscience, and her Ph.D. student and Prerna Magod Also participating in the study were Dr. Liat Rousso-Noori and Ignacio Mastandrea, also from the Faculty of Life Sciences, as well as other researchers from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The study was published in the prestigious journal Cell Reports (Exploring the longitudinal glioma microenvironment landscape uncovers reprogrammed pro-tumorigenic neutrophils in the bone marrow).

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Glioblastoma is the most common type of brain cancer, and one of the most violent and deadly cancers in humans; the average life expectancy of glioblastoma patients is 12 to 15 months from the moment of detection. The researchers explain that usually, the scientific monitoring of the development of the cancerous tumor in animal models is carried out without an active immune system, to enable the absorption and growth of cancer cells in the body. The disadvantage of this commonly-used model lies in the fact that the immune system either does not exist or does not function properly, which prevents researchers from monitoring the interaction between it and the tumor cells.

The study, which was conducted in Dr. Friedmann-Morvinskiโ€™s laboratory, used a model that examined the development of cancer cells in animal models with functioning immune systems. This allowed the cancer to grow gradually, to the point of the development of a massive tumor, which enabled the close monitoring of its development, and throughout the process, of the interaction between the cancer cells and different immune system cells.

In the study, the researchers found that cells called neutrophils play a critical role in interacting with the cancerous growth. Neutrophils are immune system cells that originate in the bone marrow, and whose purpose is to โ€œswallowโ€ or kill bacteria and fungi and fight the infections caused by them. โ€œNeutrophils are the front-line soldiers of the immune system,โ€ says Dr. Friedmann-Morvinski. โ€œWhen a tumor begins to develop, the neutrophils are among the first to mobilize and attack it to eliminate it.โ€

The researchers also found that the neutrophils remain close to the tumor throughout its development, and are continuously and consistently recruited from the bone marrow. The surprising thing that was discovered during this study is that the neutrophils โ€œchange sides:โ€ Whereas at first, with the onset of the initial tumor, the neutrophils fight it, over time the neutrophils recruited to the cancerous area begin to support its development.

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Without Egg, Sperm or Womb: Synthetic Mouse Embryo Models Created Solely from Stem Cells

The method opens new vistas for studying how stem cells self-organize into organs and may in the future help produce transplantable tissues

An egg meets a sperm โ€“ thatโ€™s a necessary first step in lifeโ€™s beginnings, and itโ€™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 โ€“ 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.



A video showing a synthetic mouse embryo model on day 8 of its development; it has a beating heart, a yolk sac, a placenta and an emerging blood circulation

โ€œThe embryo is the best organ-making machine and the best 3D bioprinter โ€“ we tried to emulate what it does,โ€ says Prof. Jacob Hanna of Weizmannโ€™s Molecular Genetics Department, who headed the research team. He explains that scientists already know how to restore mature cells to โ€œstemnessโ€ โ€“ pioneers of this cellular reprogramming had won a Nobel Prize in 2012. But going in the opposite direction, that is, causing stem cells to differentiate into specialized body cells, not to mention form entire organs, has proved much more problematic. โ€œUntil now, in most studies, the specialized cells were often either hard to produce or aberrant, and they tended to form a mishmash instead of well-structured tissue suitable for transplantation. We managed to overcome these hurdles by unleashing the self-organization potential encoded in the stem cells.โ€

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(l-r): Dr. Noa Novershtern, Prof. Jacob Hanna, Alejandro Aguilera-Castrejon, Shadi Tarazi and Carine Joubran

Hannaโ€™s team built on two previous advances in his lab. One was an efficient method for reprogramming stem cells back to a naรฏve state โ€“ that is, to their earliest stage โ€“ when they have the greatest potential to specialize into different cell types. The other, described in a scientific paper in Nature in March 2021, was the electronically controlled device the team had developed over seven years of trial and error for growing natural mouse embryos outside the womb. The device keeps the embryos bathed in a nutrient solution inside of beakers that move continuously, simulating the way nutrients are supplied by material blood flow to the placenta, and closely controls oxygen exchange and atmospheric pressure. In the earlier research, the team had successfully used this device to grow natural mouse embryos from day 5 to day 11.



This is how synthetic mouse embryo models were grown outside the womb: a video showing the device in action. Continuously moving beakers simulate the natural nutrient supply, while oxygen exchange and atmospheric pressure are tightly controlled

In the new study, the team set out to grow a synthetic embryo model solely from naรฏve mouse stem cells that had been cultured for years in a petri dish, dispensing with the need for starting with a fertilized egg. This approach is extremely valuable because it could, to a large extent, bypass the technical and ethical issues involved in the use of natural embryos in research and biotechnology. Even in the case of mice, certain experiments are currently unfeasible because they would require thousands of embryos, whereas access to models derived from mouse embryonic cells, which grow in lab incubators by the millions, is virtually unlimited.

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