For the first time in Technion’s history, the semester opened with a comprehensive program of distance teaching and learning.
The spring semester at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology opened on schedule – Wednesday, March 18, 2020 – with a comprehensive program of distance teaching and learning. This is in accordance with the updated guidelines of the Ministry of Health and the Council for Higher Education following the spread of COVID-19.
Technion faculty practice distance teaching ahead of the opening of the online Spring semester.
Technion has long been investing in the development and promotion of innovative digital teaching technologies. This has included both implementation and the training of faculty members in novel teaching methods for distance and hybrid learning (which combines frontal teaching with distance learning). Now, as a result of the spread of COVID-19, all Technion faculties are prepared for distance teaching and learning. In the past days, faculty members have undergone refresher training.
“Tomorrow we will open the semester with online courses and distance learning for thousands of students from home,” said Dean of Undergraduate Studies Prof. Hossam Haick. “We believe that with teamwork, and the efforts of our faculty members, we will provide digital learning extensively. We conducted intensive equipment testing with the participation of dozens of lecturers and some 2,000 students, to identify and fix glitches and to improve technical preparation for the opening of the semester.”
“In recent weeks we have put a lot of effort into building the technological infrastructure and carry out the necessary training,” wrote Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan to faculty and students. “However, transferring all instruction to online teaching is a major challenge. Its implementation during normal times would have been spread over a long period with numerous testing. The rapid proliferation of the Coronavirus left us with little time, and so there may still be glitches. We are confident that you understand this and that your cooperation will help correct any issues that may arise.”
“The online learning program is led by the Center for Promotion of Learning and Teaching headed by Dr. Abigail Barzilai,” said Senior Executive Vice President Prof. Oded Rabinovitch. “The Center, the faculty, the adjunct staff, and all relevant departments at Technion are working day and night to help us get through this challenging period and return quickly to a conventional teaching and learning routine. The students, under the courageous and wise leadership of the Students Association, are our true partners as we embark on this complex program together.”
In recent years, the Technion has introduced innovative technologies for distance teaching and learning, including:
Synchronous learning based on live broadcast of lectures, tutorials and meetings using the Zoom app.
Asynchronous learning based on pre-recorded lectures, the MOODLE learning management system, accessibility of digital materials via the Panopto system, shared access of documents and materials, and discussion forums. Hundreds of videotaped courses and lessons are available online.
Integrated synchronous and asynchronous learning.
Dr. Aviv Censor of the Faculty of Mathematics at Technion is Israel’s leading online lecturer. Following the move to distance learning in the days of Corona, Censor filmed a special training video that has already received thousands of views. For the video click here.
With signature responsiveness in times of emergency, Technion researchers are thinking out of the box to offer multidisciplinary solutions to the current challenge of the COVID-19 epidemic.
TRANSCRIPT: Message from Technion President, Prof. Uri Sivan Haifa, 17th March 2020
At this moment, COVID-19 is threatening our families, communities, and wellbeing worldwide. Its rapid spread affects our normal lives and jeopardizes our inherent need for certainty and security. In these difficult times, our hearts and thoughts are with those who lost their dear ones, those infected by the virus and their families, and those confined to their premises.
For all of us, the atmosphere is unsettling. But my own experience tells me that if handled correctly, by focusing first on saving lives and on containing the danger, such crises may eventually turn into a source of strength and insight.
At Technion, we are currently focusing on the containment phase, taking all necessary steps to keep the Technion family safe.
Following instructions by the Israel Ministry of Health, we will open the spring semester on March 18th with all classes taught online. Residents in self-isolation in our student dorms have been moved to one wing for effective monitoring and are provided with food and other supplies by our Students Association. We are also maintaining close communication with all the Technion community, recognizing the strength and resilience that emerges when we work together for the safety of each other. At Technion, we believe that community is immunity. Together, we will emerge stronger from this crisis.
COVID-19 is a global challenge, which ultimately asks for global scientific and technological solutions. At Technion, we have already started to direct the brainpower of our faculty to address these challenges. In the long-term, one effect of COVID-19 on Technion will be an intensification of research in multidisciplinary fields that address the threat of epidemics and pandemics. These include medical research, pharmaceuticals, big data, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, digital health responses, and much more.
Dear Technion family across the world, we wish you good health, safety, and well-being. We will emerge from COVID19 together with insight, strength, and resilience.
At Technion, we have learned through experience that in times of crisis, our greatest strength lies in our togetherness. Today, we are required to meet isolation, quarantine, insecurity, and fear, with community, communication, and a deep commitment to the wellbeing of each other.
New Technion Study Identifies Factors that Determine Trustworthiness of Online Information About Vaccines
Researchers at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology found that, when evaluating online vaccine information, vaccine-confident people and vaccine-hesitant people perceive the information’s trustworthiness differently.
The researchers’ findings show that surfers tend to consider information that encourages vaccination as more trustworthy than information that discourages vaccination, but this is less true for people who are hesitant about vaccines. On average, vaccine-hesitant people’s trustworthiness ratings are more affected by the length of the text provided, suggesting a preference for detailed explanations. Furthermore, across the board, answers provided by health professionals were viewed as more trustworthy than those supplied by parents, which, in turn, were more likely to be perceived as trustworthy than answers that did not mention the writer’s expertise or parenthood status.
These findings are based on 694 participants from the U.S. who rated 600 answers to vaccine-related questions retrieved from “Yahoo! Answers” (e.g., “As a nurse, I can tell you without a doubt there is NO WAY you can get HPV from the shot,” written by a self-described health professional). They then rated the trustworthiness of the person who wrote the answer, as they perceived it, and completed a questionnaire concerning their own vaccine hesitancy. The researchers conducted a statistical analysis of the results to find which characteristics of the answers and the raters best predicted the trustworthiness ratings.
Dr. Aviv J. Sharon
According to the World Health Organization, vaccine hesitancy – the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines – is considered one of the top ten threats to global health. Experts are concerned that online vaccine misinformation may be contributing to vaccine hesitancy. Despite this risk, little research attention has been paid to understanding how individuals seek vaccine information online and evaluate trustworthiness.
“Vaccine hesitancy is a catchall category for several different styles of decision-making about vaccines. Our study shows some ways in which vaccine hesitancy can be manifested in online behavior,” said the lead author, Aviv J. Sharon.
The study’s findings indicate that, despite the proliferation of anti-vaccine messages online, there is still a great deal of public trust in the knowledge provided by mainstream science and medicine. The findings of the study also suggest that expert outreach in online environments may be an effective intervention to address vaccine hesitancy.
Dr. Tomer Michaeli of the Vieterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Dr. Yuval Filmus of the Faculty of Computer Science are among this year’s ten young Israeli researchers to win the Krill Prize, the Wolf Foundation has announced. The two are accomplished researchers, who have already won various prestigious awards, including the Alon Fellowships and ERC grants.
Dr. Tomer Michaeli
Dr. Tomer Michaeli will receive the prize for his: “Groundbreaking work in the areas of signal processing and image processing, computer vision and machine learning.” His research develops new technologies for image processing and image recovery – with applications including medical imaging, scientific imaging, and microscopy. Among his achievements, Dr. Michaeli participated in the development of innovative technology for single molecule-based biological imaging. This technology provides an accurate, high-resolution image at unprecedented speed. He recently won the best article award (Marr Prize) at the ICCV conference, together with his doctoral student and another partner. The ICCV is one of the two most important conferences in the world for computer vision.
Dr. Yuval Filmus
Dr. Yuval Filmus will be awarded the prize for his: “Research on discrete harmonic analysis in computer science.” He deals with a theoretical field called “Boolean function analysis.” Such functions appear, among others, in computational complexity problems, encryption theory, graph theory, and combinatorial optimization. Already during his Ph.D., Dr. Filmus solved a 30-year problem in graph theory by proving the Sominovits and Sós hypothesis. Since then, he has recorded other achievements in computational complexity, science of choice, combinatorics and combinatorial optimization.
The prestigious Krill Prize is awarded to excelling faculty members at universities in Israel who have not yet received tenure. The $10,000 prizes are funded by the estate of donor Abraham Hirsch Krill Shlanger (1912-2007), born in Germany, who immigrated with his wife to South American in 1938 and was a staunch supporter of the State of Israel. “Receiving the prize is a significant step in the personal development of the academic track,” said CEO of the Wolf Foundation Reut Inon Berman. “We have witnessed the impressive achievements of award recipients over the years, many of whom are currently holding key roles in leading scientific research in Israel and around the world.”
Prof. Yehudit Judy Dori of Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has been selected to receive the NARST 2020 Distinguished Contributions to Science Education through Research Award (DCRA).
Prof. Yehudit Judy Dori
Prof. Dori has made many significant, lasting contributions to the field of science education. Her research on teaching, learning and curricula has impacted how science is taught in the K-12 and undergraduate settings. Coinciding with her well-regarded research on visualization, assessment, and metacognition, she has pioneered the field of science education through her work on many national and international committees. The hallmark of her academic contributions is her notable leadership, which has produced science education researchers and leaders and resulted in international connections that advance the field. Professor Dori’s dedication to improve science teaching and learning has made a global impact.
She served as the Dean of Continuing Education and External Studies and later as the Dean of the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology at the Technion, Prof. Dori has also intermittently been a visiting professor and scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Since 1928, NARST has promoted research in science education and the communication of knowledge generated by research. The ultimate goal of NARST is to help all learners achieve science literacy, encourage and support the application of diverse research methods and theoretical perspectives from multiple disciplines to the investigation of teaching and learning in science, and communicate science education research findings to researchers, practitioners, and policy makers.
Prof. Dori co-edited two books on cognition and metacognition in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education, published numerous journal papers, and mentored about seventy graduate students.
Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Bologna in Italy have achieved a dramatic improvement in the use of solar energy to produce hydrogen and other products.
Professor Lilac Amirav
For decades, hydrogen has been considered the fuel of the future, because its burning releases only energy and water, and does not pollute the environment. But most of today’s hydrogen is produced from natural gas in a polluting process that contributes to global warming. A promising alternative for clean and renewable production of hydrogen is the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, using sunlight, by a process called photocatalysis.
In a photocatalytic process, positive and negative electric charges, which are generated in semiconductor particles following absorption of sunlight, are harnessed for the promotion of chemical reactions of interest. In the case of water splitting, the electric charges break the water molecules; the negative charges produce hydrogen, and the positive charges produce oxygen. The two reactions, involving the positive and negative charges, must take place simultaneously. Without taking advantage of the positive charges, the negative charges cannot be routed to produce the desired hydrogen.
As a result, even though oxygen is not considered a valuable product, a great global effort was devoted to the development of photocatalytic systems that can achieve overall water splitting. These efforts, however, met little success. The water-splitting reaction involves several separate steps, and as a result, remains a significant challenge. As of yet, stable and efficient photocatalytic systems that can facilitate full water splitting have not been developed, and the search for means for green renewable production of hydrogen continues.
Now, in an article published in the journal Nano Energy, a creative solution to this problem has been presented.
The research was led by Professor Lilac Amirav of the Technion’s Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, together with colleagues at the University of Bologna. The group used unique miniature particles, developed several years ago by Prof. Amirav, as the photocatalytic system. These nanoscale particles (one nanometer is 10-9 m) present the greatest efficiency in utilizing light and the negative charges for the production of hydrogen. Now, the team demonstrates a new approach for efficient utilization of the positive charges as well, and a way for decoupling the desirable Hydrogen production from the problematic Oxygen evolution.
The researchers present remarkable photocatalytic activities for the production of hydrogen from water, while simultaneously transforming benzylamine to benzaldehyde. The benzaldehyde is produced using the positive charges, as an alternative to the production of oxygen. Used by the food, paint, plastic and cosmetic industries, it is considered a valuable product. The innovative process uses both the negative and the positive charges, thus utilizing solar energy in a more efficient and effective way.
“One could say that we have transformed the process from photocatalysis to photosynthesis, that is, genuine conversion of solar energy into fuel,” said Prof. Amirav. “In addition, the energy-conversion efficiency in this process sets a new world record in the field of particle-based photocatalysis.”
Prof. Amirav is referring to the fact that the photocatalytic system performs true conversion of solar power into storable chemical bonds, with a maximum of 4.2% Solar-To-Chemical energy conversion efficiency. This figure establishes a new world record in the field of photocatalysis, and doubles the previous record. More importantly, the U.S. Department of Energy defined 5-10% as the “practical feasibility threshold” for generating hydrogen through photocatalysis. The researchers’ success in solar energy conversion brings us to the doorsteps of economically viable solar to hydrogen conversion.
In the illustration: The vision of artificial photosynthesis as a way to improve human welfare. The illustration won first place in December in the SUN-ERGY competition. The competition was held as part of the Sunrise Initiative, whose goal is to develop renewable and non-polluting energy technologies.
Tamar Rott Shaham, a doctoral student at the Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, won the Best Paper Award (Marr Prize) at the International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV) together with her supervisor, Prof. Tomer Michaeli and Dr. Tali Dekel from Google Research.
Prof. Tomer Michaeli and Tamar Rott Shaham with the chairs of the conference Prof. Svetlana Lazebnik and Prof. Kyoung Mu Lee
ICCV is one of the three most important conferences in the field of computer vision, and the winning article was selected from more than 4,000 competing submissions.
The winning paper described a new deep learning methodology developed by the Technion team. The researchers developed an algorithm that automatically generates “invented” images based on only a single picture example – as opposed to the vast pool of images, on which current methods are based. The field of Deep Learning traditionally involves training a neural network based on a huge collection of samples. But here, the researchers present an innovative technique for training a generative neural network, with a training set containing only one picture.
Using the trained model, new image variations can be created that contain semantic data similar to the given image. In addition, the model can perform a variety of tasks such as editing the image, turning a painting into a realistic image and even creating a short video.
From nanoscale complex applications to women’s rugby, doctoral student Sara Iacopetto is playing the Technion field of excellence.
Now 27 years old, Iacopetto first came to the Technion as part of a student exchange program with the Politecnico di Milano, where she studied for a master’s degree in Materials Engineering. She was invited to return to pursue a Ph.D. by her mentor Prof. (Emeritus) Moshe Eizenberg.
The Israeli temperament is similar to the Italian, says Iacopetto. “The scenery here is great. You just leave the dorms and you’re right in a forest. It’s very different from Milan, which is very urban.”
The master’s degree studies in Italy are frontal lecture oriented, without research, says Iacopetto. In contrast, she enjoys the experimental research and labs equipped with top-notch instruments at Technion. “I was surprised that the students here receive a lot of training and responsibility. They are an important part of the research team,” she says.
As a doctoral student, Iacopetto is involved in applied research, spending much of her time at the TechnionElectron Microscopy Center (MIKA) and at the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute. “There is still a great deal of theory involved – because scientific understanding is essential when developing complex applications. I am dealing with the characterization of Metal-Semiconductor interfaces for S/D contacts of logic transistors.”
For the past three years, Iacopetto has also been captain of the Haifa women’s rugby team, and she has no doubt that rugby helps her very much in her studies. “I believe that sports are a necessary activity for preserving the mental health of students. Rugby, specifically, is a charming, very physical but yet not violent sport that gives me a lot of joy and motivation for studying as well. The team is a family and includes Christians, Jews, and Muslims – from various countries and backgrounds – and this is a great combination with the strongest team spirit I ever found.” And no less important – on the Wild Boars team she met her partner today, Omri Afek.
Her sports career began with athletics, which led her to Italian championships. At the age of 18, after seven years of long-distance running, she traveled with her father to South Africa. “One of the pubs broadcast an international rugby tournament,” she recalls. “It captivated me, and when I returned to Italy, I looked for a team in which to play”
“I started playing in the Technion team during the master exchange of 7 months. They helped me a lot in the first period while I was settling here again for the PhD.”
The Wild Boars team at the Technion is now part of the Maccabi Haifa Association. The Technion team produced top players in the Israeli National team, including the captain of the current Women’s National team, Daria Velikovsky.
What’s next? “I intend to complete my doctorate and leave academics to go to industry. And the possibility of working in a startup company intrigues me. In any case, I don’t intend to leave Israel, probably not for a long time.”
Technion-born Dr. Roni Penn, daughter of Technion Prof. Michal Penn, is innovating new ways to enhance the efficiency and efficacy of water and sewer systems
Roni Penn was born in Haifa to a pair of students who lived in the Technion dormitories. After high school, Nahal Brigade service, and an after-army trip she came back to campus in 2003 as an environmental engineering student. After 12 years at the Technion, equipped with a doctorate degree in civil and environmental engineering, which she received under the guidance of Prof. Eran Friedler, she went on to a post-doctorate at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (ETC- Eawag) and in 2019 returned to the Technion for a second time, this time as a faculty member in the Environmental, Water and Agricultural Engineering Division of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty.
“I was always very proud of my mother who is a Professor at the Technion,” she says, “but in my youth, to be a faculty member was not my life’s ambition and it was not what I thought I would do when I grew up. Life has its own interesting flow,” she adds with a smile. And she should know, as Dr. Roni Penn’s research deals with flow. She is an expert in modeling and experimenting with the movement of solids in wastewater and investigating their effects on sewage systems.
Her mother, Prof. Michal Penn, joined the Technion faculty in 1992. She was raised and educated in Kibbutz Naveh Eitan, and during her army service, she completed external matriculation. Following her undergraduate studies in mathematics and statistics at the Hebrew University she went for an eight-month trip to Africa – and then landed at the Technion. “I wanted to do performance research, and the Technion was the best place for that,” she says. “This worked out great with my husband, Michael, who started studying here at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering while I studied for my master’s and doctoral degrees in performance research at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management. We moved into the junior faculty dormitories and that’s where Roni was born.”
“So I was actually born in the Technion,” says Roni, “and even after moving to our own apartment, the connection continued, because I used to come to the pool, play tennis with my dad in front of the wall. It’s really the place where I grew up.”
Upon the completion of studies, the family moved to Vancouver, Canada, where Michal completed her post-doctorate at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Michael – his master’s degree. When the family returned to Israel, Dr. Michal Penn joined as a faculty member of the Davidson Industrial Engineering and Management Faculty. “I deal with performance research and combinatorial optimization,” she says and explains: “Actually, I work on finding optimal solutions to complex problems. For example, the traveling agent – when the agent has to visit a given number of cities in the shortest time. The problem seems simple, but it is very difficult to solve. In one of my projects, I assisted ‘Zim’ with planning the loading and unloading of containers on their ships. This is a very complex problem where there are different types of containers along the route that need to be loaded and unloaded, and the goal is to do this in the most effective way. As a rule, these are such complex mathematical problems that we usually solve them with approximate methods and research their individual cases.”
Roni, her daughter, works in a completely different field – the development of models for examining the transition to efficient water systems and the effect of such a transition on existing water and sewer systems. She says wastewater in Israel undergoes purification processes in central facilities while being transported long distances.
“Many studies show that, in some cases, decentralizing treatment of this water and purifying it at local facilities in the home, building or neighborhood level is more efficient both economically and in terms of the water cycle and the nutrients found in the wastewater. This is an important and correct trend, but as a change, the decentralization of water treatment also causes side effects unrelated to its initial purpose. Such a change raises many complex maintenance and management questions, especially in the transition phase from centralized systems to distributed or hybrid (partially decentralized) systems. From a research standpoint, there is a mix of many fields – physics, chemistry, mechanics, flow and biology while using advanced research tools like cameras, lasers, machine learning, and data science – and I am developing theoretical solutions, models and simulations and conducting experimental research on reactors simulating the transport system. The lab that I am building here will have a 30-meter tube, rooted throughout with cameras and lasers that will allow us to monitor the state of liquids and solids in various flows. The goal is to develop sewer system dynamics models, build scenarios and give recommendations to the planners.”
How did you get into this field?
“In high school, I studied physics, chemistry, and mathematics, but I also very much liked to teach. In the army, I was a teacher and I was drawn to the fields of education. I searched for a field that was practical but with educational value and social impact. So, when I signed up for the Technion, I chose a practical path that has implications for society: environmental engineering.”
She says, “Most people just flush the toilet water and they don’t care what happens beyond that. I’m a profound person and I love to explore things in depth. Sewage systems are very important to the lives of all of us, if we do not treat wastewater properly, we will all become sick.”
Recently, Dr. Roni Penn participated in the Technion’s guidance day for new faculty members, during which they are given an introductory tour of the campus, the various administrative divisions and also the teaching and research requirements. “I have known the Technion all my life and yet it feels different to return to campus as a faculty member and I have to learn and understand the many requirements of new Technion faculty members.”
What about female representation on campus?
“Along with me, five new female faculty members were hired,” says Roni, “that’s almost a third of all new faculty members recruited this year.”
Michal notes that she has seen a lot of progress in female representation on campus among Roni’s generation, but she thinks there is still more work to be done. “At my graduation ceremony at the Technion in 1988, I remember being almost the only woman. When Roni graduated in 2016, almost half of the graduates were women.”
“In our Industrial Engineering and Management faculty there are many female students studying for varying degrees, this was also the case in my day; the problem is that down the road, as faculty members, the number of women unfortunately diminishes. My progress has always been slower, but that was my choice because I had little kids at home and that was the pace that suited me. I always did everything slower but never felt less appreciated than my colleagues in light of my pace.
“It is important for me to wish Roni success on the path she has chosen. From personal experience, I know that this is not an easy path, but it is important that she remain attentive to the path she takes and not just the result and the end goal. It is important for her to take calculated risks, and especially take things in proportion and remain attentive to herself.”
Innovative research in genetics has produced a way to correct a rare syndrome called ICF or (or Immunodeficiency, Centromere instability and Facial anomalies syndrome). This is an immune disorder which can seriously endanger babies and children. The method was published in the journal eLIFE and includes the research of doctoral student Shir Toubiana and her supervisor Prof. Sara Selig at the Molecular Medicine Laboratory at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion; as well as their colleague Dr. Maria Matarazzo of the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics ABT CNR, Italy.
ICF syndrome is a rare and dangerous disease that causes immunodeficiency and mortality in the majority of patients during the first two decades of their lives. Additionally, the chromosomes – the molecules containing the genetic material – are characterized by instability in the patient cells.
From the genetic point of view, in about half of the patients, the syndrome is caused by mutations in the DNMT3B gene that is responsible for adding a chemical group of methyl to certain regions of the DNA. The main role of DNA methylation is to control gene expression and maintain chromosome stability – a biological process that protects, among other things, telomeres, the ends of chromosomes. As such, malfunctions in the methylation process lead to a disruption of telomere regulation and premature aging of patients’ cells. The disorder in ICF syndrome patients most likely starts early in their embryonic development.
Shir Toubiana, an outstanding doctoral student and a future physician, was diagnosed as hearing impaired since birth. Since then, she has been wearing hearing aids in both ears, but to her, that not a disadvantage but a challenge. She studied within the regular education system and did her military service as an instructor and mentor in the IDF Junior Command Preparatory School near the Reali School in Haifa.
A few months after being discharged, Toubiana was already studying at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, and by the end of her third year in Medical school, she was accepted into the prestigious MD/PhD program, that combines medicine with research and prepares its participants to become physician-researchers. Graduates of the program earn a dual degree: Doctor of Medicine (MD) and a Doctor of Life Sciences (PhD). As a research doctoral student, Toubiana was accepted into the Baroness Ariane de Rothschild Women’s Doctoral scholarship Program for outstanding doctoral students, that empowers doctoral students from diverse backgrounds to reach their goals in academia and in Israeli society.
Toubiana’s contributions to the field of medicine are already having an impact. From the genetic point of view, in about half of the patients with ICF, the syndrome is caused by mutations in the DNMT3B gene that is responsible for adding a chemical group of methyl to certain regions of the DNA. The main role of DNA methylation is to control gene expression and maintain chromosome stability – a biological process that protects, among other things, telomeres, the ends of chromosomes. As such, malfunctions in the methylation process lead to a disruption of telomere regulation and premature aging of patients’ cells. The disorder in ICF syndrome patients most likely starts early in their embryonic development.
The study published in eLIFE describes the successful correction of mutations in the DNMT3B gene in cells of ICF patients. Following the correction, performed on stem cells derived from the skin cells of those patients, the modified protein performed methylation of the DNA in different regions of the genome.
We have restored the functional capacity of DNMT3B and so we have been able to rescue the methylation in centromeres – the areas in the centers of chromosomes – but not in most telomeres,” says Toubiana. “We have found that the failure is due to certain molecular barriers that are part of the ‘epigenetic memory’ of patients’ original skin cells. Through chemical manipulation, we were successful in lowering some of these barriers, and indeed, the level of methylation in the telomere environment has increased.” She clarifies that although this is an important stage, “there is still a lot of work to be done on the way to treating these patients. Among other things, to find a way to allow DNMT3B to re-methylate at all its targets. Such a step will bring us closer to effective treatment, not only for ICF syndrome but also for other epigenetic diseases.”
The present study incorporated two innovative and important technologies in repairing mutations in patients’ cells: induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) and the CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing system. In the first stage, adult cells taken from the patient undergo reprogramming using molecular means that transform them from skin cells into pluripotent stem cells – iPS, that is, cells that have the potential to become body cells of different types. The stem cells obtained in this way are genetically modified using the novel CRISPR-Cas9 method. It is worth noting that the development of iPS technology led to the 2012 Nobel Prize in Medicine and that CRISPR-Cas9 technology was at the center of the Technion’s Harvey Prize awarded at the end of 2019.
“In the future, I aspire to combine clinical work as a physician with basic scientific research,” says Toubiana. “I believe that the two disciplines are intertwined and grant the physician a broader view of their patients and the possibility of researching the mechanism underlying their disease in depth.”
Alongside the intense academic and research activities, Toubiana still finds time to develop her leadership skills. This is the second year that she is a member of the Steering Committee of the Ariane de Rothschild program, founded by the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation. “This is a great opportunity to reflect our needs as doctoral students, to initiate and bring up new professional training ideas that will help us in the future and that will be implemented in collaboration with the foundation. Planning these activities requires a lot of investment, but the reward is a sense of self-fulfillment in giving to the community that I have become a part of.”
