About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-september-2014/
Sep 29, 2014... How the brain ages is still largely an open question – in part because this organ is mostly insulated from direct contact with other systems in the body, including the blood and immune systems. In research published recently in Science, Weizmann Institute researchers Prof. Michal Schwartz of the Department of Neurobiology and Dr. Ido Amit of the Department of Immunology found evidence of a unique “signature” that may be the “missing link” between cognitive decline and aging. The scientists believe that this discovery may, in the future, lead to treatments that can slow or reverse cognitive decline in older people.
Feb 04, 2019...
We treasure our hearts: we fill them with love, soothe them when they ache, and keep them powerful with diet and exercise. But sometimes, no matter what, our hearts are affected by illness and disease – and that’s where science can help.
It’s American Heart Month, the perfect time to share with you some of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s remarkable research on the heart. After all, this affects all of us: as the Centers for Disease Control says, heart problems are both common and varied, affect people of all ages, and strike equally across gender and economic borders.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/networking-with-the-lymphatic-system/
Feb 07, 2018... Running parallel to our blood vessels is another network of vessels: the lymphatic system. This equally lifegiving network serves as a conduit for everything from immune cells to fat molecules to cancer cells. Prof. Karina Yaniv of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Biological Regulation became fascinated with the lymphatic system early in her career, when she realized that this crucial, basic network was surprisingly poorly understood.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/how-immune-cells-squeeze-through-blood-vessel-walls/
Jan 18, 2017...
When it infiltrates a blood vessel wall, a T cell pushes thin filaments out of the way – but these quickly reassemble. Credit: BARZILAI ET AL / CELL REPORTS 2016
When immune cells need to attack an invader or simply patrol your organs, they must slip in and out of the bloodstream. But how they do this hasn’t been fully understood – until now.
A team from Israel and the UK watched different types of immune cell shimmy through a blood vessel wall. And instead of the blood vessel cells contracting to let them through, it appears immune cells squeeze their way through, breaking a few cell structures which are rapidly replaced.
Oct 11, 2011...
“I believe there is real magic in the way thatembryos develop. I’ve been studying them for almost 15 years and Ihaven’t stopped being amazed,” says Dr. Karina Yaniv of the WeizmannInstitute of Science’s Department of Biological Regulation.
Dr. Yaniv focuses on examining how blood and lymphatic vessels formduring embryonic development. Her research may, in the future, lead tonew therapies for heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other illnesses. “Ithink it’s imperative for us to learn how to manipulate vessel growth,”she says. “Sometimes we want to encourage vessel growth and sometimeswe want to stop it.”
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/first-blood-cells/
Aug 15, 2017... One of the first organ systems to form and function in the embryo is the cardiovascular system: in fact, this developmental process starts so early that scientists still have many unresolved questions on the origin of the primitive heart and blood vessels. How do the first cells – the progenitors – that are destined to become part of this system participate in shaping the developed cardiovascular system?
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/blood-test-for-alzheimer-s/
Feb 04, 2013...
A simple blood test could be on the way for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease. Image via Shutterstock.com*
“Today one of the main weaknesses in the Alzheimer’s area is that patients don’t find out until it’s too late,” says Ilya Budik, CEO of NeuroQuest, an Israeli company developing a novel blood test for early detection of the most common cause of dementia worldwide.
“There are many new therapies under development, and the most successful trials are showing the earlier a patient is treated, the better likelihood of responding to the treatment,” he says.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/science-tips-december-2011/
Dec 01, 2011... Less and less of today’s computing is done on desktop computers; cloud computing, in which operations are carried out on a network of shared, remote servers, is expected to rise as the demand for computing power increases. This raises some crucial questions about security: Can we, for instance, perform computations on data stored in “the cloud” without letting anyone else see our information? Research carried out at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is moving us closer to the ability to work on data while it is still encrypted, giving an encrypted result that can later be securely deciphered.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/can-the-organ-of-life-save-lives/
Oct 20, 2017...
Prof. Reuven Or, from the Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cancer Immunotherapy Research Center, speaks with Pluristem CEO Zami Aberman last month. (photo credit:PLURISTEM)
More than 13,000 Americans are diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndromes, a group of blood disorders associated with abnormal blood cell production. The average length of survival depends on the case, but the prognosis is often bad. However, according to Prof. Reuven Or, from the Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cancer Immunotherapy Research Center at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem, a new method that would prolong survival and improve quality of life for these patients is on the horizon.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/rethinking-lymphatic-development/
Aug 01, 2015... For 10 years, Karina Yaniv has worked to find out just how much zebrafish have in common with mice—at least when it comes to their lymphatic systems, the open-ended networks of vessels best known for draining fluids from tissues and providing thoroughfares for immune cells throughout the body. Yet in doing so she ended up discovering something that had very little in common with the findings of numerous earlier studies on other animals’ lymphatic systems. Contrary to the widely held view in developmental biology, she found, lymphatics don’t always originate from veins.