The Embassy of Italy in Tel Aviv In collaboration with Israel Italy Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Cordially invite you to attend the

FIFTH Italian Israeli Conference on Life Sciences:

“Collaboration and Innovation in Cancer Research and Treatment”

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 Dan Panorama Hotel, Tel Aviv From 09.00 to 13.00
for informations info@italia-israel.com

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Researchers from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology collected breath samples from 82 people from three groups: head-and-neck cancer patients, lung cancer patients and healthy people. The team examined the differences in the molecules present in the exhaled breath of each group using tailor-made detection equipment called the Nano Artificial NOSE.

The team examined the potential for a future test to be developed to diagnose head-and-neck cancer and distinguish it from lung cancer.

Lead researcher, Professor Hossam Haick, at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, said: “There’s an urgent need to develop new ways to detect head-and-neck cancer because diagnosis of the disease is complicated, requiring specialist examinations.

”We’ve shown that a simple ‘breath test’ can spot the patterns of molecules which are found in head-and-neck patients in a small, early study”.

For the full news item, see:

http://www.ecancermedicalscience.com/news-insider-news.asp?itemId=1717

See also “Potential of cancer breath test studied”:

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/04April/Pages/head-and-neck-cancer-breath-test.aspx

The original scientific article in British Journal of Cancer:

http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/bjc2011128a.html

by Aviva Mishmari

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Prof. Karin, from the University of California, San Diego, will receive the prize in the field of human health. He discovered the strong link between obesity, inflammation and cancer. The judges decided to award the prize to Prof. Karin for “his pioneering contribution that led to deciphering the molecular mechanism through which mammalian cells react to cytokines which cause inflammation, to adverse environmental conditions and also to various pathogens. His research laid the foundations for our understanding of the control mechanisms of transcription factor activities influenced by external stimulations, especially the transcription factors of the AP-1 family and NF-B. These discoveries led to the identification of new target protein cells that have recently been used to develop new medications for preventing and treating various malignant tumors.”

Prof. Polyakov, from Princeton University, will receive the prize in the field of science and technology. “He developed revolutionary theories that shaped our contemporary understanding of elementary particles in nature. In addition, he significantly contributed to condensed matter physics, statistical mechanics and mathematics. Among the ideas credited to him are topological structures (such as magnetic monopoles) in gauge field theories, which are important in understanding the confinement of quarks in the nucleus.
Polyakov also contributed to the foundations of string theory, the unification of quantum mechanics and gravity, and to the idea of duality between string theory and gauge field theory.”

The Technion’s prestigious Harvey Prize foresaw the winning of the Nobel Prize for two of the latest Nobel laureates – Elizabeth Blackburn (Medicine) and Ada Yonath of the Weizmann Institute of Science (Chemistry). To date, 13 Harvey Prize winners have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

The Harvey Prize was first awarded in 1972 from a fund established by the late Leo M. Harvey of Los Angeles in order to recognize those who have made great contributions to advancing humanity in science and technology and in human health, as well as advancing peace in the Middle East. Every year, prizes totaling $75,000 per winner are awarded from the fund’s income.

Among the winners of the prestigious Harvey Prize are scientists from the US, Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, France and Israel. These include Nobel Prize laureate Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the USSR, who was awarded the prize for his activities aimed at reducing regional tensions; Prof. Bert Sakmann who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine; Prof. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes who won the Nobel Prize in Physics; Prof. Edward Teller for his discoveries in solid state physics, atomic physics and nuclear physics; and Prof. William J. Kolff for his invention of the artificial kidney.

Proposals for candidates for the Harvey Prize are received from leading scientists and personalities in Israel and the world. The prize laureates are chosen by the Harvey Prize committee in a stringent process at the Technion.

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You are also invited to visit Vaxil BioTherapeutics site.

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Israeli biotech company Aposense offers a futuristic way of diagnosing, monitoring and treating disease through molecules designed to detect cell death (apoptosis). While apoptosis is a universal process in cell biology, it plays a role in most medical disorders. Targeting cells undergoing apoptosis, for imaging or delivering therapy, can therefore have broad clinical applications.

PET image of apoptosis in a brain metastasis, imaged with the Aposense probe (Picture courtesy Aaron Allen, Davidoff Comprehensive Cancer Center, Rabin Medical Center, Petah-Tikva)

Aposense’s patented small molecular probes selectively identify and accumulate within dying cells. They act as an imaging agent to show areas of disease or to provide a picture of the effects of treatment on cancerous cells only hours or days afterward, without any need for tissue samples.

This nearly instant molecular imaging is a vast improvement over conventional anatomical imaging, which cannot detect disease or demonstrate the effects of treatment until months later. Aposense CEO Yoram Ashery says that clinical trials at 12 major American medical centers are currently testing Aposense imaging capabilities in 90 patients with various kinds of malignant tumors. Results should be ready to present to the US Food and Drug Administration late this year.

Direct drug delivery spares healthy cells

“By allowing clinicians to know early if a treatment is working, we are enabling a new paradigm of tailoring treatments to the patients, and an important step in materializing the vision of personalized medicine,” he says.

Imaging is not the only promising use for Aposense molecular solutions. They also can deliver drugs directly to apoptotic cells and tissues without harming healthy cells. Aposense and Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals are progressing toward designing such a targeted drug therapy for cancer, which would offer a significant advance in chemotherapy. However, the potential applications go way beyond oncology, into neurology and cardiology.

“With our platform for targeting apoptosis, there are many diseases we can be effective against, using our rationally designed probes to carry the medication to the target,” says Ashery. “We want to put out four or five new candidates per year.”

Petah Tikva-based Aposense, founded by neurologist Ilan Ziv in 1997 and chaired by former Teva CEO Eli Hurvitz, was privately held until its initial public offering on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in June. Each of its 30 staff chemists, molecular biologists, bioinformatics specialists, pharmacists, physicians and clinicians oversees a single project with outside collaborators, such as Teva. A clinical team of five travels frequently to the US to monitor hospital trials.

“Rational drug design”

Just as the molecular approach to imaging and drug delivery is novel, so is the mode of developing it, Ashery explains. Traditionally, pharmaceuticals are derived through a process of “discovery,” involving lots of trial and error until the most effective formula is found. However, that method does not allow the developers to understand exactly why it works or under what conditions it might stop working, Ashery notes.

“The more advanced development approach is ‘rational drug design,’ based on studying the targets from every biochemical aspect and using computational technologies to design a structure optimal for that target,” he says. “We’ve taken that path of rational design, which takes longer because you’re building your molecules atom by atom, like Legos. But once you’ve optimized it, you know the specific role of each and every atom, and then you can also modify it as necessary for particular purposes.”

Pharmaceutical powerhouses including Roche in Switzerland and GlaxoSmithKline in the United Kingdom recently signed agreements with Aposense allowing them to use the specially formulated molecules in drug-development studies. “In return, we get the data from those tests,” says Ashery. “It’s a win-win situation.”

Possibilities for expanding the use of Aposense molecules in imaging are also being explored in the laboratories of US academic institutions affiliated with clinical test sites.

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Research subjects smoking waterpipes Photo credit: RHCC.

In a project conducted recently at Rambam, Prof Lea Bentur, director of the hospital’s Pediatric Pulmonary Department, examined 45 male and female subjects. All were over the age of 18, the average being 32. Subjects were asked to smoke a waterpipe with an Egyptian-made brand of apple-flavored tobacco popular in Israel.

A half hour after smoking, the subjects underwent examinations of blood pressure, pulse, breathing, lung function and blood composition. Significant bodily damage was apparent. The level of carboxyhemoglobin, which prevents oxygen delivery to body tissue, jumped to up to 26%. This is a far greater increase than that caused by cigarettes. Levels above 25% require hospital admission and may adversely affect the heart and brain. Interestingly, females – who are more susceptible to cigarette-smoking damage – had higher carboxyhemoglobin levels.

Waterpipes, also known as hookahs, shishas or nargilas, are widespread in the Middle East, Turkey, India, and Pakistan. With globalization and immigration, waterpipe use has spread to Western countries, notably among youth. The ‘moasel’ tobacco used in water- pipes has the same amount of nicotine as 10 cigarettes, and as many toxins as 100 cigarettes.

According to Prof Bentur, the charcoal disks used in waterpipes are synthetic, and contain coal, as well as industrial and waste materials. There is no basis to the common belief that water filters the poisons in the smoke, she adds. Smoke is not filtered at all, and enters the body directly.

Prof Bentur explains that the waterpipe’s ‘innocent’ appearance is misleading. “The pipes are often beautiful objects made of colorful glass,” she says. “The tobacco has a fruity taste that seems natural, but it is still tobacco. It contains nictotine, tar, benzoapyrene, arsenic, chromium and lead, which can cause lung, bladder and other cancers. More than cigarette smoking, waterpipe smoking increases chance of chronic bronchitis, heart and vascular disease. Mouth-to mouth use may encourage the spread of mouth, lip and gum infections.”
Prof Bentur and her team are taking this research one step further. They will explore the connection between waterpipe smoking and endothelial dysfunction, a precursor to atherosclerosis. They will check its effect on airway cytokines, small proteins involved in cellular interactions and communications.
“I first got the idea for this research when I noticed that many young adolescents with mild asthma developed severe deterioration in a short period,” says Prof Bentur. “When I asked them if they smoked, they answered, ‘yes, but only a waterpipe.’”

“I am convinced that parents must stop their children from waterpipe smoking, which can become chronic and dangerous,” says Prof Bentur, who supports increased education and regulation, at least for those under 18.

Writer: Roberta Neiger, ProText

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The method involves detecting human leukocyte antigens in the blood and analyzing them to see which kinds of peptides are attached. HLA molecules “ferry peptides from inside the cell to the cell surface,” Admon says.

Once the peptides are anchored to the cell surface, T cells check to see whether the peptides are normal or not. Normal cells release a small amount of HLAs into the bloodstream, but cancer cells release larger amounts — which slows down and confuses T cells. Admon and his team discovered that not only are peptides from cancerous cells being released to the cell surface and into the bloodstream, but that HLA molecules are still bound to those peptides. “It’s like a memory of a protein in the blood,” Admon says. “And with our new method, we can actually purify these HLA molecules from the blood and get enough material to purify the peptides that are bound to these molecules.”

After drawing a small amount of blood from a cancer patient, Admon and his postdoc Michal Bassani-Sternberg — who devised the method and was first author of the study published in PNAS in October — used immunoaffinity purification methods, passing the plasma through a column covalently bound with antibodies that attract HLA molecules. Once they washed the column to remove serum proteins, Admon and Bassani-Sternberg injected the peptides into an Orbitrap mass spectrometer to identify them. They were able to identify thousands of HLA peptides, some of which were cancer related, including tumor testis antigens, embryonic cancer antigens, and tumor-associated protein products. According to Admon, another advantage of this method is that immunoaffinity purification of the HLA molecules and their bound peptides provides researchers with an enrichment of five orders of magnitude of the biomarkers in the blood serum. The number of HLA molecules in the blood no longer matters, nor does the noise created by the other proteins in the blood.

The usefulness of the peptides as cancer biomarkers is not yet entirely clear, Admon notes. Although much work remains to be done, he is optimistic about this method’s potential in the clinic. “We think it’s going to be a universal method for finding cancer and other diseases,” he says. Before that can happen, however, the same research has to be repeated in large cohorts of patients and in healthy control subjects. Admon and his team are continuing their work and expanding beyond multiple myelomas and leukemias. The growing ubiquity — and falling cost — of mass spectrometry analysis could help make the team’s approach like this a common diagnostic test. “I envision it as a routine blood test, something rather simple,” Admon says. “But until it’s implemented in the clinic, there’s still a lot more work to do.

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The Deloitte Technology Fast 50, one of the Israel’s foremost technology award programs, is a ranking of the country’s 50 fastest-growing technology companies based on percentage growth over five years. The Fast 50 program honors business growth, technological innovation and Israel entrepreneurial spirit.

BioView’s automated scanning microscope and image analysis systems perform a wide range of genetic tests based on fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) technology with applications in cancer screening and diagnosis, prenatal and post-natal genetic analysis and minimal residual disease. The BioView instruments help commercial and hospital laboratories provide highly reliable test results to physicians and patients quickly and cost-effectively and also are used in advanced research.

“Because the Deloitte Brightman Almagor Zohar Fast 50 measures sustained revenue growth over five years, being one of the 50 fastest growing technology companies in Israel is an impressive achievement”, said Tal Chen, director in charge of the Deloitte Brightman Almagor Zohar Israel Technology Fast 50 Program. “BioView deserves a lot of credit for its remarkable growth.”

About BioView Ltd.

Established in 2000, and led by an expert team of biologists, software engineers and physicists, BioView develops, manufactures and supplies cell imaging equipment, biological kits and software to medical institutes and universities. BioView is a publicly traded company on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, and currently has strategic collaborations underway with international scientific leaders and institutions.

About Deloitte Technology Fast 50

The Deloitte Brightman Almagor Zohar technology fast 50 annually recognizes and honors the 50 private and publicly-held fastest growing technology companies in Israel, based on percentage revenue growth over a five-year period.

The objective rankings are determined by percentage revenue growth over the last five years. To qualify, companies must own proprietary technology. Participants can be private or public companies operating in any area of technology.

The fast 50 program was initiated in San Jose, the center of Silicon Valley, California in 1995 and quickly became a growth benchmark of success in the USA.

The fast 50 programs supplement the broader Deloitte technology fast 500 initiative in that the winners typically become automatically eligible to participate in the Regional Deloitte Technology Fast 500 program. The program has expanded world wide to incorporate 15 individual programs in the USA alone and in twelve countries and regions. To learn more about the other Deloitte Technology Fast 50 programs please visit the individual Web sites in the list below.

For more information about the BioView technology, and press related issues, please contact info@bioview.co.il or visit www.bioview.co.il.

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The mechanism of action of BC-821 is based on a plasmid that synthesizes Diphtheria Toxin in cancerous cells, activated by the regulatory sequences of either or both of two target genes: the H19 gene and the IGF2 gene, both of which are expressed in cancerous cells only. The expression of either target gene is sufficient to activate the drug. BC-821′s double activation method is designed to kill more cancerous cells in a greater number of patients more efficiently. An international patent application for this product was filed in 2008.

In light of the initial results, BC-821 will undergo additional pre-clinical testing as a treatment for additional applications. BioCancell will consider continued development of this product candidate for types of cancer with high levels of IGF2 expression, depending on the resources available to the company.

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BioCancell’s Technology – Targeted Cancer Therapy

The approach is based on the identification of particular genes that are highly expressed only in tumors (“Target Genes”). The regulatory sequences of these Target Genes are used to drive the expression of a toxin gene exclusively within tumor cells, enabling targeted tumor-cell destruction, leaving normal cells intact.

The patient’s eligibility for the treatment is determined by analyzing the patient’s tumor for the expression of the specific Target Genes. The diagnosis of the expression of the Target Genes is, therefore, a prerequisite for treatment and is made possible through the Company’s proprietary diagnostic technology that enables detection of even a single malignant cell. Only those patients with high expression levels of the Target Genes in their tumor are eligible for treatment with high confidence of success.

The Company has designated two genes as Target Genes – H19 and IGF2.

About BioCancell

BioCancell Therapeutics Inc. is a biopharmaceuticals corporation specializing in the development of Targeted Cancer Therapy for the treatment of numerous types of cancer. The Company’s proprietary technology constitutes a novel paradigm for the targeted destruction of cancer cells, with no effect on normal surrounding tissue and no observed side effects, allowing for long-term, safe treatment and prevention of cancer.

BioCancell was co-founded in 2004 by Professor Avraham Hochberg, Professor of Molecular Biology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, based on technology developed by him over the past 20 years.

BioCancell’s securities are traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE:BICL), with the major stockholders being Clal Biotechnology Industries, a member of the IDB group of companies, and Professor Hochberg.

For more information, please visit http://www.biocancell.com.

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Photo credit: ardelfin from morguefile.com

“Apoptosis is associated with almost every medical disorder,” said Yoram Ashery, CEO of Aposense, a clinical stage molecular imaging and drug development company that completed its Initial Public Offering on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in June.

Aposense is currently in stage two in clinical trials of a versatile molecular imaging technique that would allow scientists to produce detailed images of apoptosis; such imaging would enable them to come closer to understanding the different mechanisms that cause cell death in diseases such as cancer.

Aposense is currently working with Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva to “reach dying cells of very high specificity” through the imaging technology.

Ashery expects that the company will enter stage III by 2012. Should FDA approval happen, he says the company’s technology could have applications for a wide breadth of illnesses.

by Aviva Mishmari

For the full story:

http://www.thejewishweek.com/special_sections/healthcare/new_research_israel

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