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These five Israeli advances could transform cancer treatment Ben Hartman
C
ancer is the second-leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for 22.5 percent of American fatalities. Only heart disease is more deadly. In Israel, cancer is the No. 1 killer. That’s partly why Israel has become a research leader in the fight against the disease. Many of the world’s most effective cancer treatments have roots in Israeli research, sometimes going back decades. The work taking place in Israeli labs today may lead to lifesaving treatments years in the future. Here are five promising areas Israeli researchers are studying in their quest for better cancer detection and treatment. Together they provide a glimpse into the remarkable scope of cancer research being conducted by internationally renowned scientists across Israeli institutions. Mutant reeducation camp and the fight against ovarian cancer Mutant reeducation may sound like the plot of the next X-Men movie, but for a team of Israeli researchers it could be central to finding new treatments for ovarian cancer, an especially deadly disease because of the difficulties of early detection. This year, 22,440 women in America will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer and 14,080 will die from it, according to American Cancer Society estimates. In a program at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science financed in part by the Israel Cancer Research Fund, Dr. Varda Rotter is looking for ways to fight the disease on the molecular level using a protein known as the “king of tumor suppressors.” The protein, p53, stops the formation of tumors. But when p53 mutates, it makes cancer cells more malignant and boosts their resistance to drugs. Rotter and her team have identified a small number of molecules that are able to “reeducate” mutant p53 and restore it to its role scanning for damaged DNA and
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stopping the development of tumors. They are also looking for methods to reeducate the mutant p53 to fight and eradicate mutant cells. “We are trying to find a way to convert or reeducate the mutant p53 to its role as the ‘guardian of the genome,’” Rotter says. Rotter hopes her team’s research will result in methods that can be applied along with immunotherapy to give women with ovarian cancer a better chance of beating the disease. Restoring infertility? Hit the restart button. For many cancer patients, surviving is just the first part of the battle. They often face serious lifelong problems, such as infertility or the loss of healthy tissue that is highly difficult to regrow. “How do you replace damaged body parts?” asks Dr. Jacob Hanna of the Weizmann Institute. The key, Hanna and many others believe, lies in stem cells. Stem cells are early-stage cells that are capable of dividing into infinitely more cells and have the potential to become different cell types, such as bone, skin, or muscle. Stem cells can help repair damaged tissue. Hanna is using ICRF funding to research ways to take cells from healthy areas of the patient’s body and turn them back into induced embryonic stem cells— the equivalent of the first cells with which each human body begins. Because the stem cells in Hanna’s model would come directly from the patient’s DNA rather than from a donor, the tissue would not face rejection. Reverting the cells to their beginning state would be “like hitting the restart button of your computer,” Hanna says. The treatment would be unique. Currently the only proven stem-cell therapy in use is centered on transplanting bone marrow. There are no stem-cellbased treatments for replacing organs or tissue other than blood. But Hanna believes stem-cell treatments are going to continued on page 16
Louis Eisenberg Former owner of Uncle Louie’s Deli, Prostate cancer survivor
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jewishnewsva.org | May 28, 2018 | Health Care | Jewish News | 15