LIFE SCIENCES
BIOTECHNOLOGY AND BRAIN SCIENCES
CANCER RESEARCH
AT THE FOREFRONT
One of the world’s foremost centers for cancer immunology, Bar-Ilan is home to scientists who are developing strategies for enhancing the body’s natural ability to block tumor formation. Bar-Ilan laboratories are also breaking new ground in the areas of cancer genetics and genomics, tumor dynamics, targeted drug treatment and advanced medical imaging.
NEW GROUND
Traditional anti-cancer treatments are often more painful than the disease itself. That’s why a number of Bar-Ilan researchers are developing strategies that involve activating the immune system to defend the body against cancer.
Working with Professor Michael Albeck, noted immunologist Prof. Benjamin Sredni has synthesized a compound that significantly stimulates immune function.
IMPLEMENTING SOLUTIONS AND
IMPROVING LIVES
Bio Tech has helped produce insulin to treat diabetic patients, helped develop and produce a drug that will destroy cancerous cells without harming healthy ones and helped create a drug that will prevent the creation of blood vessels that nourish cancerous tumors. It also allows you to produce and market biological replacements for chemical pesticides.
Professor Uri Nir, a Bar-Ilan University researcher developed a compound that disables cancer cells. It was named the #1 scientific breakthrough of the year in Israel in 2017. He identified an enzyme cell FerT in the energy generating mitochondria of metastatic cancer cells. When he targeted FerT in lab mice, the malignant cells soon died, preventing the cancer from metastasizing.
Professor Nir is a Director of the Nano Medicine Center at the Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA) and Dean of the Mina and Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences.
UNDERSTANDING THE WORKINGS
OF THE BRAIN
Understanding the secrets of the brain requires a multidisciplinary approach and a combination of expertise and tools from different schools: Physics, Biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Pharmacology, Psychology, Linguistics, and Mathematics. No other program offers such a comprehensive education as the Bar-Ilan Brain Sciences Program. Its unique format and versatile interdisciplinary study-track is befitting of the complex features of the human brain.
Dr. Eitan
Okun
outstanding achievement in
ALZHEIMER'S RESEARCH
"The vaccine that I am working on
helps the body go into attack-mode
against the amyloid beta proteins
that accumulate in the brain of people
with Alzheimer’s."
In
Focus
Dr. Eitan
Okun
outstanding achievement
ALZHEIMER'S
RESEARCH
"The vaccine that I am working on
helps the body go into attack-mode
against the amyloid beta proteins
that accumulate in the brain
of people with Alzheimer’s."
In
Focus
“What actually causes Alzheimer’s in most cases remains mostly unknown,” he explains. “The vaccine that I am working on helps the body go into attack-mode against the amyloid beta proteins that accumulate in the brain of people with Alzheimer’s.” The vaccine has proven successful in research mice and he thinks that, in two to three years, clinical trials on humans can begin.
Also in the works are newer and more accurate methods of early detection of Alzheimer’s, through the use of MRI testing.
Prof. Okun earned his Masters and Doctorate in Immunology at Bar-Ilan University and did a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Health in the United States. His Masters research analyzed how stress can affect a person’s immunity to various diseases.