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/in-the-news/the-transformation/
Sep 15, 2014...
An experimental new drug can make some leukemic cells mature into healthier ones. Illustration by Brian Stauffer
For almost thirty years, William Kuhens worked on Staten Island as a basketball referee for the Catholic Youth Organization and other amateur leagues. At seventy, he was physically fit, taking part in twenty games a month. But in July of 2013 he began to lose weight and feel exhausted; his wife told him he looked pale. He saw his doctor, and tests revealed that his blood contained below-normal numbers of platelets and red and white blood cells; these are critical for, respectively, preventing bleeding, supplying oxygen, and combatting infection. Kuhens was sent to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, in Manhattan, to meet with Eytan Stein, an expert in blood disorders. Stein found that as much as fifteen per cent of Kuhens’s bone marrow was made up of primitive, cancerous blood cells. “Mr. Kuhens was on the cusp of leukemia,” Stein told me recently. “It seemed that his disease was rapidly advancing.”
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/predicting-immunotherapy-success/
Feb 18, 2020... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—February 18, 2020—One of the frustrations with anti-cancer therapy is that no one drug fits all: Most work well in some people but have little effect in other patients with the same type of cancer. This is as true of the newer immunotherapy treatments as it is of older types of chemotherapy. Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have now identified new markers that can help predict which patients have a better chance for a positive response to immunotherapy treatments. Their findings were reported in Nature Communications.
Jan 31, 2018...
SPENCER HEYFRON FOR READER'S DIGEST
In 2008, just after she’d started kindergarten, Tori Lee was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), an aggressive form of blood cancer. Chemotherapy cures most children of the disease, but Tori wasn’t as lucky. A playful little girl who was doted on by her three older sisters, she “was treated with chemotherapy for about two years, and then she relapsed,” says her mother, Dana Lee. “We started a new protocol, with more intensive chemotherapy and radiation. She spent hundreds of days in the hospital.” And still the cancer held on.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/therapy-programs-patients-own-cells-to-fight-cancer/
May 20, 2013...
Emily Whitehead, 8, celebrates a year of remission after cancer therapy at Children's. Photo from The Philadelphia Inquirer
It is vanishingly rare for an experimental treatment to wipe out advanced, recurrent cancer, then keep the disease from coming back.
Yet therapies driven by CARs have been doing exactly that in a small but growing number of blood-cancer patients at the University of Pennsylvania and other centers.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/altitude-training-for-cancer-fighting-cells/
Sep 19, 2017...
Cancerous tumor tissue under a microscope: T cells grown under low oxygen conditions (green) and regular T cells (purple) show similar distribution patterns vis-à-vis blood vessels (red). Right: The content of granzyme B, a cell-killing enzyme (red), is much higher in T cells grown under low oxygen conditions (top) than in regular T cells (bottom)
Mountain climbers and endurance athletes are not the only ones to benefit from altitude training – that is, learning to perform well under low-oxygen conditions. It turns out that cancer-fighting cells of the immune system can also improve their performance through a cellular version of such a regimen. In a study published in Cell Reports, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have shown that the immune system’s killer T cells destroy cancerous tumors much more effectively after being starved for oxygen.
Aug 15, 2016...
Basel, August 15, 2016 - Today Novartis announced that six scientists will receive the 2016 Novartis Prizes for Immunology at the upcoming 16th International Congress of Immunology (ICI) in Melbourne, Australia on Aug 22, 2016.
The Novartis Prizes for Immunology are awarded every three years for breakthrough contributions to the fields of basic and clinical immunology. Each of the two Prize categories is endowed for CHF 100,000 and can be shared by up to three scientists.
Sep 21, 2015...
We've all read that healthy living – eating a diet high in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, exercising regularly, not smoking, and maintaining a healthy weight – can boost your immune system to help you fight colds and infections.
But now research conducted by pioneering immunologist Michal Schwartz and her team at Weizmann Institute in Israel suggests that boosting immunity may be the key to treating and preventing a host of diseases and conditions, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, and glaucoma.
Sep 13, 2019...
Illustrative photo of a doctor with a cancer patient (via Shutterstock)
Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have found that diversity in cancer cells causes the cancers to be less responsive to immunotherapies — treatments that harness the immune system to tackle the devastating disease.
The Weizmann researchers say their findings indicate that heterogeneity of the cancer cells should be taken into account when trying to understand whether a patient will benefit from immunotherapies.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/prof-michal-schwartz-will-change-your-mind/
Sep 22, 2015... September 21st is World Alzheimer’s Day – and, not coincidentally, the release date for Prof. Michal Schwartz’s new book. Published by Yale University Press, Neuroimmunity: A New Science That Will Revolutionize How We Keep Our Bodies Healthy and Young not only presents her game-changing work on the immune system’s connection to the brain, but brings to life her extraordinary journey as a woman in science.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/rethinking-the-aging-brain/
Oct 01, 2006...
A vaccination for slowing the brain’s aging process is the goal of Prof. Michal Schwartz of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Neurobiology Department. “At face value, it sounds like an impossible mission,” she says.
However, her research suggests that the immune system plays a critical role in maintaining a healthy brain and the renewal of brain cells. Consequently, boosting the immune system via a vaccination may one day help to prevent aging of the brain and perhaps slow down disease progression in the cases of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
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