“Our next generation of scientists and Nobel laureates, and the future of the Technion depends on the Lokey Center.”




Technion scientist Prof. Dror Seliktar made headlines with the introduction of patented sophisticated gels to speed up the ability of the body to regenerate after traumatic injury, now undergoing clinical tests in Europe. 


Now, his research team at the Lokey Center for Biomaterials and Tissue Regeneration at Technion is working on a new material for the mass production of stem cells to make their commercial use viable on an industrial scale.




“In the biotechnology industries, there is an inherent need for expanding populations of stem cells for therapeutic purposes,” says Seliktar of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, who has published over 50 papers in the field, won over 14 awards and launched one of Israel’s promising biotech startups, Regentis Biomaterials.




The team has identified a real practical need for effective handling of stem cells if they are to be widely used in the future. The culture techniques that are premised on laboratory petri dishes will have to be replaced by larger vessel reactors. 


A patented customized gel developed by the team provides the substrate needed by stem cells to grow and multiply in these specialized reactors. “Using our material technology, we have the ability to adapt stem cell cultivation into a 3D suspension reactor,” says Seliktar. “We can encapsulate the cells in the gels which sit inside the reactor… allowing the cells to perceive an anchorage dependent environment normally provided by the petri dish culture methods.”




Lorry Lokey’s vision in investing in multidisciplinary research into life science and engineering is changing the scientific and industrial horizon in Israel, says Seliktar, whose 12-strong team includes eight PhD students in disciplines ranging from biotechnology engineering, materials science, chemical engineering, biology and more. 


“We really benefit from the new facilities and new labs made possible by the generosity of Lokey. My lab is an environment that optimizes the type of research we are doing, both in the context of how students react in an interdisciplinary fashion, but also in providing a work place that is friendly and enabling for the students to be creative and efficient and diligent. On a global perspective, it has enabled us to bring in excellent scientists that contribute to the innovation of this place. This has expanded our ability to make an impact on the scientific and clinical worlds.”




A keyword with Seliktar is regeneration, and he describes the Lokey foundation gift as having a regenerative impact on the Technion. “These are our next generation of scientists and Nobel Laureates,” he says, “The future of the Technion relies on that.”



Regentis Ahead

 


“If you get a traumatic injury to the knee, very few treatment options are available,” says Prof. Dror Seliktar, giving an example of one use of the innovative biodegradable hydrogels being marketed by a company he founded, Regentis Biomaterials. 


“A replacement knee may eventually be required if the progression of the injury is not contained. If you are injured at age 25, it can be pretty daunting to know that at age 55 you may need a knee replacement. We can alleviate the progressive degeneration with a therapy that actually helps repair the tissue – intervening early on and preventing further degeneration.”




Established in 2004, Regentis Biomaterials is commercializing innovative biodegradable hydrogels for the local repair of damaged cartilage and bone.  The platform technology is a family of hydrogels called Gelrin™. These gels can be injected or applied to a specific local site and offer beneficial properties for the local repair of damaged tissue such as cartilage and bone.




“The company is pretty unique in Israel, and also in the world,” says Seliktar. The Technion lab is among only a handful of laboratories worldwide that have developed novel biomaterials that are now clinically applied.   

Prof. Karl Skorecki

New research from the Technion Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute and the Rambam Medical Center may lead to the development of new methods for controlling the growth of cancer, and perhaps lead to treatments that will transform cancer from a lethal disease to a chronic, manageable one, similar to AIDS.

By placing cancer cells in and near a growth developed from a population of human stem cells, scientists have demonstrated that the cancer cells grow and proliferate more robustly when exposed to human cells than they do in a typical petri dish or mouse model.

The cancer cell population is also more diverse than had previously been understood.  The research was published in the current advanced online issue of the journal Stem Cells. Maty Tzukerman, Rambam senior research scientist and the project leader and senior co-author on the report, says that this model will facilitate targeted drug discovery aimed at blocking the cancer cell self-renewal process.

Previous studies have determined that some tumor cells appear to be differentiated, while others retain the self-renewal property that makes cancer so deadly. According to Technion Professor Karl Skorecki, director of Medical Research and Development at Rambam Health Care Campus and senior co-author on the report, this new research attempts to understand how cancer grows, and to find ways to halt the runaway replication.

In order to mimic the human cancer environment as closely as possible, the research team developed a teratoma — a tumor made of a heterogenous mix of cells and tissues — by enabling the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into a variety of normally occuring human cell lines on a carrier mouse. The human cellular teratoma constitutes a new platform of healthy human cells for monitoring the behavior and proliferation of human cancer cells.

For this study, the team took cells from one woman’s ovarian clear cell carcinoma and injected them either into or alongside the human stem cell-derived environment. “We noticed very early on, rather strikingly, that the human cancer cells grow more robustly when they are in the teratoma environment compared to any other means in which we grew them, such as in a mouse muscle or under the skin of a mouse,” says Skorecki.

The scientists were able to tease out six different kinds of self-renewing cells, based on behavior — how quickly they grow, how aggressive they are, how they differentiate — and on their molecular profile. This was a previously unknown finding, that one tumor might have such a diversity of cells with crucial fundamental growth properties. Tzukerman explains that the growth of the cancer cell subpopulations can now be explained by their proximity to the human cell environment.

The researchers cloned and expanded the six distinct cell populations and injected them into the human stem cell teratomas. One key observation is that some cells, which were not self-replicating in any other model, became self-replicating when exposed to the human cells.

Skorecki said that while he wasn’t surprised that the human environment affected the growth, he was in fact surprised by the magnitude of the effect: “We have known for years now that cancers are complex organs, but I didn’t think the power of the human stem cell environment would be so robust, that it would make such a big difference in how the cells were grown.”

The researchers point out that they do not yet know the cues that particularly enhance the cancer’s proliferation, and the team is now working on isolating the factors from human cells that promote such plasticity and self-renewing properties. The scientists explain that this may eventually allow physicians to manage cancer as a chronic disease: instead of one therapy against the entire tumor, researchers may develop a method to tease out the variety of self-renewing cell lines of a particular tumor and determine what allows each to thrive, then attack that mechanism.

Skorecki and Tzukerman say that an important next step in this line of cancer research will be to identify and develop ways of blocking the factor or factors that promote this essential self-renewing property of cancer, thus relegating many forms of cancer to controllable, chronic diseases.

This research was supported with grants from the Daniel M. Soref Charitable Trust, the Skirball Foundation, the Richard D. Satell Foundation, the Sohnis and Forman families, and the Israel Science Foundation.

(l-r) Prof. Judea Pearl, Prof. Sir Richard Friend, Prof. Moshe Sidi, Prof. Oded Shmueli, Prof. Gitti Frey, Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie. Photo: Shlomo Shoham, Technion Spokesman

“The Israeli economy must undergo change, and turn from a high tech-oriented economy into a science-oriented economy. To achieve this we must strengthen the academy, on which the continued stability of Israel’s economy is contingent, and continue to make academic education accessible to the entire population”, said Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, Chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education, in the Harvey Award Ceremony at the Technion last week. “Only the academy can provide the science infrastructure that is a prerequisite to economic prosperity, and the democratization of knowledge is key to increasing equality and reducing social gaps”, he emphasized.

The Harvey Prize was awarded this year to Profs. Judea Pearl and Sir Richard Friend.

Prof. Trajtenberg added that the world’s wonder at Israel’s quality R&D is justified, and yet it is important to understand that nowadays most of investment is in the D, namely development. “We must invest so much more in the R, research, and in bridging between the two, namely between industry and academy, through programs such as MAGNET. We must also extend our pursuit of innovation beyond the realms of high-tech, as is already the case with water and energy, fields that have turned from ‘traditional’ industries to industries involving innovative technologies”.

The Harvey Prize is awarded by the Technion in recognition of great contributions to the advancement of humanity in science and technology and  human health, and to the advancement of peace in the Middle East. Among the recipients of the Harvey Prize are scientists and others worldwide, many of whom have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said the awarding of the Prize is a “celebration of science”, and added that the Harvey Prize was awarded for the first time in 1972, in the presence of Leo Harvey himself, who passed away a year later, Israel’s President at the time Zalman Shazar, and Israel’s Prime Minister at the time Golda Meir. 75 prizes have been awarded to date, and 13 of the winners later became Noble Laureates.

Prof. Judea Pearl of UCLA is a leading artificial intelligence expert, who less than two weeks ago was announced winner of the 2011 Turing Award, known also as “the Noble Prize of Computing”. Pearl is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, AAAI and IEEE, and President of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, named after his son, a journalist who was killed in Pakistan.

Prof. Pearl’s work has laid the foundations for the treatment of uncertainty in computerized systems, and its applications range over a wide spectrum of disciplines: security, medicine, genetics, and natural language understanding. Alfred Spector, Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives at
Google, said that “modern artificial intelligence applications – robotics, smart cars, speech recognition and machine translation – have an interest in uncertainty. Prior to the innovations developed by Pearl, most artificial intelligence systems relied on Boolean logic – they ‘understood’ truth and falsehood, and could therefore deal well with challenges such as chess – but they did not deal successfully with ‘maybe’.”

In its reasons for his win, the Harvey Prize Committee said that Prof. Pearl has “laid, through courageous and far-sighted research the theoretical foundations for the presentation of knowledge and reasoning in computer science. His theories of inference under uncertainty, and in particular the Bayesian Networks approach, have influenced varied disciplines, including artificial intelligence, statistics, philosophy, health, economics, social sciences and cerebral cognitive processes. The Harvey Prize in Science and Technology is awarded to Prof. Pearl in recognition of the breakthroughs that are embodied in his researches and their influence on multitudes of spheres of our life.”

Prof. Sir Richard Friend of the University of Cambridge has “invented” organic electronics (printed plastic electronics), among the applications of which are plastic LED devices (OLED displays), advanced photovoltaic cells, the electronic newspaper, and thin flexible displays.

Prof. Friend has over twenty patents to his name, and his historical paper dated 1990 was has been quoted over 8,000 time. “Happily, some of the Technion’s excellent students have chosen to do their post-doctorates with me, and have exposed me to Technion quality”, said Prof. Friend, and noted Profs. Gitti Frey and Nir Tessler. “I followed them to the Technion, and have been visiting professor here for many years”.

At the end of the 1980s, the OLED, a light-emitting organic (plastic) diode, was discovered in Prof. Friend’s lab. In 1996, the first laser based on this technology, namely on semiconductor light-emitting plastic, was manufactured.  In 1998, the first integrated optoelectronic component, which paved the way to the creation of plastic integrated circuits, was released.  Prof. Friend, a pioneer in the field, is a leading player both in the scientific research of these materials and in their translation into varied applications.

In its decision to award the Prize to Prof. Friend, the Harvey Prize Committee cited that “his breakthrough research made possible deep understanding of electronic and optical processes in polymer conductors for realizing a range of devices including field-effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, photovoltaic cells and lasers. Demonstrating scientific and technological leadership, Prof. Friend has made a decisive contribution to the harnessing of science to the creation of this new technology, as evidenced by, inter alia, the two successful spin-off companies he founded. The Harvey Prize in Science and Technology is awarded to Prof. Sir Richard Friend in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the development of a new semiconductor family and his impact on our lives.”

The Harvey Prize was awarded for the first time in 1972, from a fund established by Leo M. Harvey, of Blessed Memory, of Los Angeles, in recognition of great contributions to the advancement of humanity. Every year, the fund awards $75,000 to each of the winners.

(l-r) Prof. Judea Pearl, Prof. Sir Richard Friend, Prof. Moshe Sidi, Prof. Oded Shmueli, Prof. Gitti Frey, Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie. Photo: Shlomo Shoham, Technion Spokesman

“The Israeli economy must undergo change, and turn from a high tech-oriented economy into a science-oriented economy. To achieve this we must strengthen the academy, on which the continued stability of Israel’s economy is contingent, and continue to make academic education accessible to the entire population”, said Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, Chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education, in the Harvey Award Ceremony at the Technion last week. “Only the academy can provide the science infrastructure that is a prerequisite to economic prosperity, and the democratization of knowledge is key to increasing equality and reducing social gaps”, he emphasized.

The Harvey Prize was awarded this year to Profs. Judea Pearl and Sir Richard Friend.

Prof. Trajtenberg added that the world’s wonder at Israel’s quality R&D is justified, and yet it is important to understand that nowadays most of investment is in the D, namely development. “We must invest so much more in the R, research, and in bridging between the two, namely between industry and academy, through programs such as MAGNET. We must also extend our pursuit of innovation beyond the realms of high-tech, as is already the case with water and energy, fields that have turned from ‘traditional’ industries to industries involving innovative technologies”.

The Harvey Prize is awarded by the Technion in recognition of great contributions to the advancement of humanity in science and technology and  human health, and to the advancement of peace in the Middle East. Among the recipients of the Harvey Prize are scientists and others worldwide, many of whom have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie said the awarding of the Prize is a “celebration of science”, and added that the Harvey Prize was awarded for the first time in 1972, in the presence of Leo Harvey himself, who passed away a year later, Israel’s President at the time Zalman Shazar, and Israel’s Prime Minister at the time Golda Meir. 75 prizes have been awarded to date, and 13 of the winners later became Noble Laureates.

Prof. Judea Pearl of UCLA is a leading artificial intelligence expert, who less than two weeks ago was announced winner of the 2011 Turing Award, known also as “the Noble Prize of Computing”. Pearl is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, AAAI and IEEE, and President of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, named after his son, a journalist who was killed in Pakistan.

Prof. Pearl’s work has laid the foundations for the treatment of uncertainty in computerized systems, and its applications range over a wide spectrum of disciplines: security, medicine, genetics, and natural language understanding. Alfred Spector, Vice President of Research and Special Initiatives at
Google, said that “modern artificial intelligence applications – robotics, smart cars, speech recognition and machine translation – have an interest in uncertainty. Prior to the innovations developed by Pearl, most artificial intelligence systems relied on Boolean logic – they ‘understood’ truth and falsehood, and could therefore deal well with challenges such as chess – but they did not deal successfully with ‘maybe’.”

In its reasons for his win, the Harvey Prize Committee said that Prof. Pearl has “laid, through courageous and far-sighted research the theoretical foundations for the presentation of knowledge and reasoning in computer science. His theories of inference under uncertainty, and in particular the Bayesian Networks approach, have influenced varied disciplines, including artificial intelligence, statistics, philosophy, health, economics, social sciences and cerebral cognitive processes. The Harvey Prize in Science and Technology is awarded to Prof. Pearl in recognition of the breakthroughs that are embodied in his researches and their influence on multitudes of spheres of our life.”

Prof. Sir Richard Friend of the University of Cambridge has “invented” organic electronics (printed plastic electronics), among the applications of which are plastic LED devices (OLED displays), advanced photovoltaic cells, the electronic newspaper, and thin flexible displays.

Prof. Friend has over twenty patents to his name, and his historical paper dated 1990 was has been quoted over 8,000 time. “Happily, some of the Technion’s excellent students have chosen to do their post-doctorates with me, and have exposed me to Technion quality”, said Prof. Friend, and noted Profs. Gitti Frey and Nir Tessler. “I followed them to the Technion, and have been visiting professor here for many years”.

At the end of the 1980s, the OLED, a light-emitting organic (plastic) diode, was discovered in Prof. Friend’s lab. In 1996, the first laser based on this technology, namely on semiconductor light-emitting plastic, was manufactured.  In 1998, the first integrated optoelectronic component, which paved the way to the creation of plastic integrated circuits, was released.  Prof. Friend, a pioneer in the field, is a leading player both in the scientific research of these materials and in their translation into varied applications.

In its decision to award the Prize to Prof. Friend, the Harvey Prize Committee cited that “his breakthrough research made possible deep understanding of electronic and optical processes in polymer conductors for realizing a range of devices including field-effect transistors, light-emitting diodes, photovoltaic cells and lasers. Demonstrating scientific and technological leadership, Prof. Friend has made a decisive contribution to the harnessing of science to the creation of this new technology, as evidenced by, inter alia, the two successful spin-off companies he founded. The Harvey Prize in Science and Technology is awarded to Prof. Sir Richard Friend in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the development of a new semiconductor family and his impact on our lives.”

The Harvey Prize was awarded for the first time in 1972, from a fund established by Leo M. Harvey, of Blessed Memory, of Los Angeles, in recognition of great contributions to the advancement of humanity. Every year, the fund awards $75,000 to each of the winners.