Monthly Archives: January 2018

The Technion will award the prestigious prize to Professor Tobin Marks for breakthroughs in chemistry and to Professor Carla Shatz for her discoveries in the development of visual neural circuits

On June 10, 2018, the Technion will award the 2017 Harvey Prize in Science and Technology to Professor Tobin Marks from Northwestern University (USA) and to Professor Carla Shatz from Stanford University (USA). The $75,000 prize, named after longtime Technion supporter Leo Harvey (1887-1973), was established in 1972 as a bridge of good-will between Israel and other nations, and is granted annually to individuals who have made significant contributions to humankind. The Harvey Prize is considered by many as a precursor to the Nobel Prize, with some 20% of the Harvey Prize laureates later becoming Nobel laureates. Shortly after winning last year’s Harvey Prize, Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss and Professor Emeritus Kip Stephen Thorne, who led the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015 in the framework of the LIGO collaboration, were granted the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Far-reaching effect of modern chemistry

Professor Tobin J. Marks

Professor Tobin J. Marks will receive the Harvey Prize for his ground-breaking research that has both fundamental and practical significance, in the areas of catalysis, organo-f-element chemistry, electronic and photonic materials, and coordination chemistry, all of which have strongly impacted contemporary chemical science.

Born in 1944, Professor Marks is a member of the Department of Chemistry at Northwestern University. He completed his BSc in Chemistry at the University of Maryland in 1966 and his PhD at MIT, in 1971. He has received many prizes throughout his academic career, including the Karl Ziegler Prize, granted by the German Chemical Society; the Priestley Medal of the American Chemical Society; and the National Medal of Science (USA). In 2011, he won the Schulich Excellence Award from the Technion.

Professor Marks is a world-renowned expert in many fields, including catalysis, printed electronics and solar energy conversion devices. He has developed a variety of recyclable plastics, screens, electronic components and cells for conversion of solar energy to electricity. His specialties include polymer and metal chemistry, photonic materials, super-conductors and organometallics.

Plasticity of the early development of vision

Professor Carla J. Shatz

Professor Carla J. Shatz will receive the Harvey Prize for her discoveries about the emergence and function of brain circuits for vision. Her major contributions to science include fundamental discoveries about how brain circuits in the developing visual system are fine-tuned with experience and neural activity. These molecular and circuit level findings have therapeutic implications for treating memory loss in the aging and in neurodevelopmental diseases.

Professor Shatz, born in 1947, is a professor of biology and neurobiology at Stanford University. She completed her BSc in Chemistry in Radcliffe College, which operates today as a part of Harvard University. She completed her MPhil Physiology at the University College London and her PhD in neurobiology at the Harvard School of Medicine. As a doctoral candidate at Harvard, she was mentored by Professors David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, the 1981 Nobel Prize laureates in Medicine. Prof. Shatz was the first woman to receive a doctorate in neurobiology at Harvard.

A member of many professional societies that include the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has been awarded numerous prizes in neuroscience, including the Gerard Prize, Gruber Prize and Kavli Prize.

SEALANTIS RECEIVES CE MARKING FOR Seal-G ® SURGICAL SEALANT FOR GI PROCEDURES

Haifa, Israel January 4th, 2017

Sealantis, a leading innovator and developer of absorbable surgical adhesives and sealants, announced today that it has received CE Marking approval (“CE”) for its Seal-G ® Surgical Sealant (“Seal-G”), the first and only alginate sealant designed specifically to help reduce leaks after gastrointestinal (“GI”) procedures. 
The CE will allow to market the product in the Europe and additional other countries. 

Seal-G helps preventing anastomotic leaks – a serious complication that occurs in 5-15 % of patients undergoing GI surgery. One third of the post-surgical mortality after colorectal surgery is attributed to leaks and it is considered by GI surgeons as the most devastating complication. In addition to its clinical outcome, this serious complication can cause up to a five-fold increase in patient management costs. Seal-G Surgical Sealant reinforces the anastomosis during the initial post-surgery period, when the development of leaks is most likely to occur. 

“The Seal-G CE marking approval represents a key milestone on our journey to commercialize the Sealantis platform technology” said Avi Kerbs, Sealantis Chairman and Teuza fund CEO. “We look forward to make Seal-G available to patients and surgeons in Europe, China and globally.

“The CE marking approval for Seal-G is a major achievement for our team” said Tomer Fuchs, Sealantis CEO. “This approval clearly indicates that Seal-G and our supporting quality system met the essential requirements for product safety, performance and usability, in compliance with growing rigorous requirements set by the EU regulations.”

About Sealantis

Sealantis is a leader in the development and manufacturing of tissue adhesives and sealants intended to improve the recovery of patients following surgery. The Sealantis Algae-mimetic technology platform, developed at the Technion, is a protein-free plant based technology,
which provides excellent adhesion in a wet surgical field and is easy to use and handle
Sealantis flagship product, Seal-G is designed to reinforce the suture or staple-line in GI surgery.  Seal-G has a CE marking for sale in the EU. In the US, Seal-G is not approved by FDA and is not yet available for sale. The company’s future products include absorbable hemostatic sealant and a Dural sealant for neurosurgery. Sealantis pipeline products are in development and have not yet been approved for sale in the US or in any other market.

January 21, 2018 (HAIFA, ISRAEL) – Iron is an essential component of life. It is responsible for transporting oxygen in red blood cells, for activation of enzymes involved in DNA production and for energy production in the cell. Iron deficiency impairs oxygen transfer throughout the body, cell division and energy production yet, excess, ‘free’ iron, i.e. iron that is not bound to any protein, may trigger oxidative stress that can be toxic to the organism. Therefore, both, iron deficiency or overload may lead to stress, which mediates inflammatory diseases, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Assistant Professor Esther Meyron-Holtz

The cover story of Blood Journal’s January 18 issue presents research conducted in the Technion Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering that uncovers, for the first time, a mechanism for cellular transport and secretion of ferritin, a protein that was considered central mainly to iron storage in the human body. Led by Dr. Marianna Truman-Rosentsvit and Assistant Professor Esther Meyron-Holtz, the benchmark study significantly advances our understanding of the way the body handles iron, opening new horizons for research and therapeutics.

Ferritin is one of the central factors regulating cellular iron content and protecting the organism from iron toxicity. The article describes the distribution of this protein within cells and the mechanisms underlying its secretion from the cell.

“Ferritin is a protein essential to the body’s iron balance and there is a strong correlation between impaired iron and ferritin balance and a range of pathological and neuropathological processes,” says Assistant Professor Meyron-Holtz. “Thus, our discovery opens the door to a more accurate and comprehensive understanding of the characteristics of ferritin and molecular processes it undergoes, which is highly important. Such insights are bound to contribute to the development of therapies for the numerous neurodegenerative diseases, which are characterized by abnormal iron distribution in the brain.”

Dr. Marianna Truman-Rosentsvit

The Blood Journal study describes and explains the intracellular distribution in, and secretion of ferritin from macrophages, cells of the immune system that play a central role in the systemic iron cycle. The work involved bioinformatics tools to analyze the evolution of ferritin secretion, its three-dimensional shape and topologies that may be involved in its distribution.

“Using these computational tools let us predict sites on ferritin that play roles in its secretion. A variety of biochemical techniques, including the CRISPR-Cas9 technology, which enables rapid genome editing, revealed that manipulating these specific sites indeed affected ferritin-secretion” reported Assistant Professor Meyron-Holtz.

The article revealed two non-classical mechanisms central to ferritin secretion, of which one is associated with a tiny vesicle called the exosome. “Many research teams are currently studying the dynamics of substance transport in exosomes – a platform that enables these substances to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. Our current publication shows, for the first time, that ferritin containing thousands of iron atoms is present in extracellular exosomes” reported Dr. Truman-Rosentsvit. “It remains unclear what its role is, however, we assume that it is involved in intercellular iron distribution in tissues including the brain. Finding iron rich extracellular ferritin strongly implies that ferritin is not merely a vessel for secure and available storage of iron within the cell, but also a key player in tissue and systemic iron distribution.”  

The findings of this study move ferritin to the center stage of systemic iron metabolism, as a protein that not only stores, but also transports iron in a controlled manner, giving it all attributes of an iron regulator.

Big Step for the Future of Medicine: Biomedical Informatics Conference at the Technion

At the international conference, experts discussed the use of Big Data and deep learning in numerous fields related to development of “precision medicine”

On December 13-14, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology hosted the first international conference on biomedical informatics – a field based on computerized analysis of the overall data amassed by academia, hospitals and health funds. The use of deep learning, Big Data and other technologies gives experts the ability to analyze information in an intelligent, rapid and efficient manner. The goal is to precisely adapt treatments to specific patients.

Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavie congratulated the organizers, Dr. Kira Radinsky and Prof. Roy Kishony, Director of the Technion’s Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering. “We’re living in a fascinating era for scientific research, an era where extensive data is used to improve diagnoses and treatment. There is no doubt that Israel in general, and the Technion in particular, is an excellent location for such a pioneering conference, since the Technion is one of the only technological institutions in the world with its own medical school. Our cooperation with China, where the Guangdong Technion Israel Institute of Technology was recently inaugurated, opens us to a goldmine of data.”  

Serial entrepreneur Jonathan Adiri gave a keynote lecture about “The Era of Permanent Revolution.” Adiri was Pres. Shimon Peres’s Chief Technology Adviser, a position that enabled him to build ties in the U.S. and Korea. He was president of the inaugural class of Singularity University (2009), which was founded by NASA and Google, and is the founder of Healthy.io, a medical diagnostics company based on the use of Smartphone cameras, that was recently mentioned in The Economist.

Adiri described the challenges that will be encountered by tech companies in the near future, when Smartphones will be used for inexpensively and quickly diagnosing diseases. “We are in the midst of a time of perpetual revolution,” he said. “Innovation revolutions don’t happen if they aren’t economically beneficial. For example, the drone market experienced a drastic plunge in prices – parts that cost $100 in 2007 now cost 50 cents. The computing power of the iPhone 4, which currently costs hundreds of dollars, is stronger than the computing power of the first mission to the moon. The success of reusable space launchers is so huge because of the economic considerations: these launchers save enormous amounts of money. Imagine that every time an airplane lands after a flight, it would be destroyed – this was the situation with previous space launchers. Israel is very well positioned for this era, for shaping the future and spreading knowledge, thanks to an efficient and decentralized system of decision making.”

Hanna Bayer, the Chief Scientist of New York University’s HUMAN project , which will be launched in 2018 in New York City  presented the project  that will collect information from approximately 10,000 people from all five boroughs for a period of 20 years. The data will be collected on a single research platform and will be used by researchers from all over the world for analyzing data connected to health, education, genetics, the environment and lifestyle. The aim is to identify the links between different variables using Big Data technology. According to Bayer, “instead of looking for specific data and connecting them to a person’s health, we will continuously monitor a large spectrum of data related to a person’s biology, genetics, behavior, environment, food intake and exercise regimen, as well as what he buys and with whom he meets. The idea is to measure everything that can be measured, based on a large sample and over a long period of time, in order to reach conclusions that can be implemented and will help improve human health.”  

Dr. Ran Balicer, Director of the Clalit Research Institute in Israel, spoke about the future challenges in medicine from the point of view of the service provider. “Health funds and hospitals are contending with several large challenges simultaneously: the aging of the population, the large number of diseases and harsh budget restrictions. A considerable part of the solution to these challenges lies in technology. Technology can help us prevent medical errors, which is the third most common cause of death in the world – before accidents, diabetes, drugs, etc. – by preventing unnecessary (or harmful) interventions, which currently account for about one-third of all medical procedures, and by carrying out procedures not currently done today. Clalit Health Services, which is responsible for 53% of people insured by Israel’s health funds, provides hospital care in addition to community medical services. We have accrued an enormous amount of data, and our goal is to harness this information for the good of the patient. We will do so through proactive medicine that invites the patient to carry out critical tests before he feels that there is a problem and before the symptoms appear. We have had several successes in predicting diseases and adapting treatment to specific patients, and we do everything in order to improve our use of technology for the patient’s benefit.”  

Dr. Varda Shalev, Director of Maccabi Health Care Services’ Institute for Research and Innovation, said that “in the past, the medical staff wanted information. Today, there is plenty of information and what they’re lacking is the tools to analyze the information. Maccabi has approximately two million members – a relatively large and stable cohort – and all tests are carried out in a single lab. That’s an excellent base for using innovative technology to analyze data, and we are expending a great deal of effort to do so in the most effective ways. One example is our cooperation with the organizer of today’s conference, Prof. Kishony, analyzing urine tests carried out all over Israel.”

Conference organizers: Dr. Kira Radinsky and Prof. Roy Kishony of the Technion’s Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering

Dr. Kira Radinsky, who began studying at the Technion’s Computer Science Faculty at the age of 15, completed three degrees at the Faculty: a B.Sc. as part of the Rothschild Scholars Program for Excellence, and a Masters and Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Shaul Markovitch. Already while pursuing her Masters degree, Dr. Radinsky developed a metahodology for predicting future events based on Internet queries. Based on this methodology, she founded the company SalesPredict, which was eventually acquired by eBay. Companies hire SalesPredict to forecast the probability of selling products to other companies, and following its acquisition, Dr. Radinsky was appointed eBay’s Chief Scientist in Israel. She is currently a guest professor at the Technion.

At the conference, Dr. Radinsky’s lecture presented possible ways to harness deep learning and big data for identifying various causal links related to medicine. “Rather that looking for specific links based on our hypotheses, we can let the computer find such links without guidance, based on a huge sample set. For example, in this way we were able to find unknown side effects of medicines and combinations of medicines. I believe that in the future we will not only be able to examine the effects of combining medicines but also develop new medicines in this manner. It’s important to point out that this is a completely new type of science that isn’t based on experiments that test hypotheses but, rather, on data that determine the research’s hypothesis.”

Prof. Roy Kishony is the head of the Lorry Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering at the Technion and a faculty member of both the Technion’s Biology and Computer Science departments. In 2016, Prof. Kishony published an article in the journal ‘Science’ where he presented an innovative platform that makes it possible to precisely track bacteria’s evolution while they are developing resistance to antibiotics. This platform was the first demonstration of its kind showing the connection between genetic adaptation and spatial constraints. 

Prof. Kishony’s lecture at the conference discussed the necessary processes given the fear of a post-antibiotic era when bacteria won’t react anymore to antibiotic drugs. “We must not only know the bacteria’s current resilience level, but also which resilience level they are expected to develop, and maybe initiate a reverse process that will prompt them to develop renewed sensitivity to the drug. This is ‘anticipatory medicine’ that will give us ways to diagnose the disease before its outbreak – a diagnosis that will make it possible to predict the future and create a treatment that is better adapted to the patient.”

The students Lindsay Moore and Idan Yelin were the winners of the scientific posters competition that took place at the conference. Lindsay Moore poster presented the Alignment of Single-cell based development trajectories, and Idan Yelin poster presented Genomic proof of probiotic transmission from capsule to blood in patients with Lactobacillus Rhamnosus GG Bacteremia.

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The Evolution of Bacteria on a “Mega-Plate” Petri Dish from Harvard Medical School on Vimeo.

January 10, 2018 (HAIFA, ISRAEL) – Over the past few decades, research groups from around the world have been addressing the challenge of splitting water in order to produce hydrogen. The reason for this interest is that hydrogen fuel is a ‘green’ and ecological alternative for existing fuels, produced from an inexpensive and readily available resource – water. It is also the only by-product of hydrogen-powered cars, which is in stark contrast to the polluting fumes that gasoline-powered vehicles emit.

Assistant Professor Galia Maayan

In an article published in the Nature Catalysis, Assistant Professor Galia Maayan of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology presents a molecular complex (also called an artificial molecular cluster) that dramatically improves the efficiency of water oxidation. It does so by biomimicry – a field of engineering inspired by nature (bio=life, mimetics=imitation). In this specific case, the inspiration comes from the process of photosynthesis in nature.

Photosynthesis is a natural process that developed in plants, bacteria and algae through evolution. Energy from the sun is used to transform water and carbon dioxide into organic material and oxygen. This process is vital for life on Earth, because all animals incapable of performing photosynthesis (including human beings) are nourished from the food chain whose first link is photosynthetic bacteria. In addition, the oxygen we breathe originates in photosynthesis.

Manganese (Mn), is one of the essential elements in the photosynthesis process. Inspired by nature, much research was conducted in order to enable the utilization of manganese as a catalyst for water splitting, in combination with electricity as an energy source, aiming to produce hydrogen – a process known as water electrolysis. Each molecule of water, H2O, contains one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, which are split using energy from an electric current. This is done with a cathode and an anode; the cathode contributes electrons to the water and attracts oxygen, and the anode takes electrons from the water and attracts hydrogen. This is a very challenging process, often requiring large amount of energy to set it in motion. Moreover, Mn-based catalysts are often unstable and decompose rapidly during this process.

Naama Gluz

The molecular complex developed by Maayan is expected to change this situation. This cluster, which is actually a complex molecule called Mn12DH, has unique characteristics that are advantageous when splitting water. Experiments conducted with this complex demonstrate that it produces a large quantity of electrons (electric current) and a significant amount of oxygen and hydrogen, despite a relatively low energetic investment. No less important, it is stable – meaning that it is not easily demolished, like other Mn-based catalysts.

According to Maayan, “In nature, evolution created a protein shell around the manganese core that stabilizes it and prevents its dissolution. Inspired by this natural structure, we developed an organic shell that enables the manganese complex to dissolve in water and stabilizes it.”

Much of the work described in the article was carried out by the student Naama Gluz as part of her M.Sc. studies under the supervision of Maayan. Gluz is continuing to research the unique manganese complex as part of her doctoral studies. In preliminary experiments, she was able to demonstrate that the complex is capable of splitting water through exposure to light from a simple lamp. In the future, this will make it possible to produce oxygen and hydrogen in large quantities and very rapidly. The idea is that eventually the process will work with solar energy, without requiring electricity.

Fig. 2: Mn12Ac as a structural mimic of the OEC capable of reversible oxidation processes

Israeli pride: Technion to launch first autonomous nanosatellite formation into space in 2018

Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis: “Proof of Israel’s Strength”

The project is supported by the Adelis Foundation and the Israel Space Agency of the Ministry of Science

Technion and the Israel Space Agency announced that in late 2018, a group of three nanosatellites, which will fly in controlled formation, will be launched for the first time into space.  The satellite formation will be launched by the Dutch company Innovative Solutions In Space, which specializes in launching nanosatellites on the Indian PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle).

The Adelis-SAMSON Project has been developed in recent years by a team of researchers headed by Prof. Pini Gurfil, Director of the Asher Space Research Institute and member of the Technion Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, and with the support of the Adelis Foundation and the Israel Space Agency. The goal of the project is to prove that a group of satellites can fly in a controlled formation for one year while orbiting at an altitude of about 600 kilometers.

“Israeli technology is breaking new ground and demonstrating its innovativeness over and over again,” said Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis. “We are proud to be part of this flagship project, which represents a significant contribution to the advancement of Israeli aerospace and the training of students in this field.”

Prof. Pini Gurfil, Director of the Technion Asher Space Research Institute

The satellites will be used for receiving signals from Earth and calculating the location of the source of transmission for search and rescue operations, remote sensing, and environmental monitoring. The size of each of the satellites is 10X20X30 cm, about the size of a shoebox, and they weigh a total of around 8 kg. The satellites will be equipped with measuring devices, antennas, computer systems, control systems and navigation devices. The flight software and algorithms were developed in the Technion Distributed Space Systems Lab.

“Satellite miniaturization together with advanced Israeli technology will enable us to take Israel an important step forward in the field of nanosatellites,” explained Prof. Gurfil. “The degree of innovation here can be compared to switching from a PC to a laptop and then to a mobile phone, which offers far more capabilities than its predecessors.”

“The field of nanosatellites has developed significantly in recent years and the number of launches doubles annually,” said Mr. Avi Blasberger, Director General of the Israel Space Agency. “The development and launch costs of such satellites are significantly lower than those of conventional satellites. In the near future, we can expect networks of thousands of nanosatellites that will fly above the Earth and enable high-speed Internet communication at significantly lower cost than today.”

“The nanosatellite program was made possible through the generosity of donors from Israel and abroad who understand the importance of space exploration for the security and prosperity of the State of Israel,” said Prof. Boaz Golany, Technion Vice President for External Relations and Resource Development. “Technion thanks its supporters, led by the Adelis Foundation, for their important role in the realization of this program, and is proud of its partnership with Israel’s aerospace industry. Without the active collaboration with industry, the impressive technological achievements made by the Adelis-SAMSON program would not have been possible.”

The satellite’s unique technology is all “blue and white”: Rafael’s krypton gas-based propulsion system will be the first system in the world to power a tiny satellite. The digital receiver was developed by Elta and the guidance control system was developed at Israel Aerospace Industries MABAT plant in cooperation with researchers from Technion.

In addition to the propulsion system, the satellites will accumulate energy through solar panels that will extend from the sides of each satellite and serve as wings that will control the flight formation without the use of fuel, by means of air resistance in the atmosphere.  Each of the nanosatellites will be equipped with a digital signal receiver, one of the most complex receivers ever designed for a nanosatellite. The satellite information processing system and the algorithms that control the formation will be the first of their kind in the world and will support the autonomous operation of several satellites together. The communications and navigation system will include two GPS receivers to be used for autonomous navigation and a communications system to be used by the three nanosatellites in order to communicate with one another and with the ground station – a significant challenge that has been solved in the current project. A dedicated frequency will be used for sending data to Earth via broadband.

“If we manage to prove in space that flying in formation is possible,” said Prof. Gurfil, “it will be a major boost for the development of small satellites and technologies related to the miniaturization of electronic components, for efficient space processing and for space propulsion systems. The technologies developed in the nanosatellites will contribute to a variety of civilian applications and will promote Israel’s aerospace industry.”