Reporting from Rehovot: A sister I never knew delivers an eternal Holocaust message

By Zahava Scherz

As the child of Polish Jews who had survived the terrors of World War II, I was always aware of the Holocaust — but at a distance.

Then, when I was 14 years old, I came across a red photo album, hidden in my parents' home outside Tel Aviv. The photographs in the album were from that dark time. They showed my father Yaacov Laskier's family, all of whom had been exterminated in the Holocaust. All I had known previously was that before the war, my father and his four brothers and four sisters belonged to a well-to-do, respected Jewish family.

(Photo - Laskier: Died in a Nazi concentration camp at age 14 / Family picture via Zahava Scherz)

In the album, there was a photo of a girl embracing a little boy. She was about 8 years old, with beautiful black, smooth hair. With a heavy heart, I turned to my father and asked him who those children were, and who was the girl who resembled me. And then, for the first time, my father told me about Rutka and Joachim-Henius, his children with his first wife, Dvorah Hampel. All three of them had perished in Auschwitz. Rutka was 14 when she died, exactly my age when I found out about her existence. Henius was 7 years old.

When I met Rutka

That is how I found out about my father's deceased children, and about his first life in Bedzin, a city in southwestern Poland where Jews had lived for centuries in peace until German troops arrived in September 1939. Four days after they occupied Bedzin, the Germans burned the town's historic synagogue to the ground, after locking some 200 Jews inside.

Six decades later, in 2006, my life was changed by an even more startling revelation, when the world and I learned that my half-sister Rutka had kept a diary during the war that had recently been made public. In these pages, I met Rutka for the first time: a very talented and beautiful girl, who, while being aware that she would not survive, wanted to document those days, in hopes future readers could follow her life and understand her death. When the diary was published, first in Poland and then in Israel, it was hailed for opening an illuminating new window into Jewish life during the Holocaust.

Although her notebook is far shorter, Rutka's prose, like Anne Frank's, transports readers directly into the experience of a persecuted adolescent living under the Nazi's occupation in a world that gets narrower and narrower until the bitter end. Its most gripping scene is Rutka's first-person account of a German Aktion in August 1942, in which the entire Jewish community of Bedzin was summoned to an outdoor stadium, then ruthlessly sorted into groups whose destinies were stark: a chance for life — or a death sentence to the nearby extermination complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most striking was the fact that Rutka clearly knew that Jewish adults, and even children, who were taken to the camp were being killed in the gas chambers.

The next generations

I recently visited an eighth-grade class in Bedzin, where students were studying Rutka's Notebook and conducting interdisciplinary projects "in the footsteps of Rutka Laskier." I listened to the students read paragraphs from my sister's diary and explain with love and compassion why they chose them. I will never forget this experience, which showed how meaningful her words can be for the young generation.

We must commemorate the lives of those lost to racial and political fanaticism — and not just on days like Holocaust Remembrance Day this Friday. We must not be afraid to remember, and more important, we must teach our children about the past. I applaud French President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to institute a nationwide Holocaust educational program. He is correct that ignorance could cause the repetition of this abominable event — whether it is rooted in anti-Semitism or any other hatred. All nations should follow France's lead and create new ways to remember the past and teach tolerance.

At a time when genocide remains a horrible reality in too many parts of the world, Rutka Laskier, Anne Frank and other Holocaust diarists remind us of the sanctity of each life that is taken in the mass crime that is genocide.

I feel confident that if my sister Rutka could have lived to speak to us today, she would encourage us never to forget the bitter fruits of racial and political fanaticism and to ensure that our children learn the same lesson. But then again, in a sense she still lives, and will always live to tell her story, in the moving pages of her notebook.

Zahava (Laskier) Scherz, Ph.D., is a faculty member of the Department of Science Teaching at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and the author of two essays in Rutka's Notebook: A Voice From the Holocaust.

Source: Zahava Scherz. A sister I never knew delivers an eternal Holocaust message. Blogs @USA Today (28 April 2008) [FullText and Comments]

Martin S. Kimmel, 92, Co-Founder of Retail Real Estate Firm and Rehovot's Weizmann

By Dennis Hevesi

Also see: Legacy.rehovot.org, Obituaries and Guest book we site of Rehovot, Israel

Martin S. Kimmel, a real estate developer who tracked power company trucks throughout South Florida in the early 1960s to find sites for what eventually became the nation’s largest builder of strip malls, died Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 92.

The cause was congestive heart failure, his stepdaughter, Betsy Karel, said.

With a handshake, Mr. Kimmel and his friend Milton Cooper started the Kimco Realty Corporation in 1960. Until the corporation went public 30 years later, the partners never saw a need to formalize their business relationship, Mr. Cooper said Wednesday.

Starting with a “mundane pedestrian strip” on Coral Way in Miami with a Zayre discount store and two other stores, Mr. Cooper said, the company has built a portfolio that now includes about 1,900 properties in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Brazil — approximately 1,100 of them strip shopping centers. The value of the common stock of Kimco, based in New Hyde Park, N.Y., was $286 million in 1991; today it is about $10.2 billion.

With that first shopping strip under construction, “Cooper and Kimmel quickly learned the tricks of the local real estate game,” a 1998 article in Institutional Investor magazine said. “Kimmel would follow utility trucks to find out where new power lines were being laid,” an early sign of new residential development.

“That’s how we knew where the traffic was going,” Mr. Kimmel recalled in the article.

Though lacking the luster of skyscrapers or enclosed malls, the strips are cheaper and easier to build and rapidly generate profits. Of Kimco’s 1,200 shopping centers, 135 are now in Florida and about 100 in New York State.

“Kimco has become the king of U.S. strip shopping centers,” Institutional Investor said.

Born in the Bronx on April 9, 1916, Mr. Kimmel was one of four sons of Henry and Emma Kimmel. His father managed a lighting fixture store. After briefly attending Syracuse University, Mr. Kimmel served in the Army in the Pacific during World War II.

After the war, while working with his father at the lighting store, he became acquainted with home builders and began questioning them about the intricacies of construction. Eventually, that led to the start of a company that built garden apartments and town houses on Long Island. With profits from those developments, Mr. Kimmel and Mr. Cooper started Kimco, aware that South Florida was being transformed from vacation destination to retirement haven.

In addition to his stepdaughter, Betsy Karel of Washington, Mr. Kimmel is survived by his wife, the former Helen Lyttle; another stepdaughter, Abby Leigh of Manhattan; a stepson, Alexei Hay of Manhattan; a son from an earlier marriage that ended in divorce, Adam; and four grandchildren.

Mr. Kimmel retired from Kimco in 1991 and concentrated on philanthropy. Debra LaMorte, the senior vice president for development at New York University, said Mr. Kimmel and his wife made important gifts to the university, among them financing the Helen and Martin Kimmel Center for Stem Cell Biology; creating a professorship of molecular immunology; and contributing to the construction of the Helen and Martin Kimmel Center for University Life. This 210,000-square-foot granite-and-glass student center at Washington Square houses the 1,022-seat Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

Mr. Kimmel and his wife also made major contributions to the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. They financed the acquisition of 50 acres by the institute, increasing its land by 20 percent, and established a major award program for research scientists there.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction of April 18, 2008

An obituary on Thursday about Martin S. Kimmel, a developer of strip malls, misstated the relationship of one of his survivors. Abby Leigh is his stepdaughter, not his daughter.

Source: Dennis Hevesi. Martin S. Kimmel, 92, Co-Founder of Retail Real Estate Firm, Dies (17 April 2008) Correction Appended. New York Times [FullText]

Prostate cancer and team Science: Cooperating for a cure

By Jenny Hazan

According to the latest estimates from the Prostate Cancer Foundation, more than 218,000 men in the United States alone will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year. The disease strikes one in six men. If detected early enough, there is a high success rate with traditional treatments such as radiation, chemotherapy, surgery (prostatectomy), hormone therapy, cryotherapy, and high-frequency radiotherapy (Hi-Fu). But the side effects of such treatments can be severe, requiring patients to undergo long and painful recoveries and in the long-term, causing impotency or incontinency. What's more, in all cases the collateral damage caused by one treatment closes the door to subsequent therapies, so healing is hope-ess in cases where the cancer is not cured in one shot or metastasizes to other parts of the body.

At least that was the prostate cancer treatment landscape until the beginning of 2000, when the research outcome of a unique team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, had appeared to enable a better remedy. Nine years earlier, the director of the Weizmann Institute's Avron-Wilstatter Minerva Center for Research in Photosynthesis, Dr. Avigdor Scherz, and the head of the Institute's Department of Biological Services, Dr. Yoram Salomon, helmed jointly the basic idea. By 1995, they had already gathered a relatively small group of chemists, biologists, pharmacologists, physicians, and physicists who had proven their novel concept. At the end of 1996, industry joined in to boost up the pharmaceutical development. Three years later, following an extensive basic and pre-clinical research, a new compound and tailored technology emerged.

TEAM SCIENCE

The treatment is nontoxic and there are no long-term side effects. It takes only 10 minutes and is a non-invasive, potentially outpatient procedure. Best of all, the remedy doesn't cut patients off from subsequent treatments. In clinical trials, 50% of patients have been cured with a single treatment and possibly 70-80% may be cured after two. It is called Vascular Targeted Photodynamic Therapy (VTP), and it may revolutionize the way science approaches cancer treatment.

How did this small team come so far so quickly? What is the secret to their solution? How did they manage to succeed where other major universities and research institutes have failed?

According to Salomon, it is all a matter of opening the lines of communication between disciplines. Whereas classical formats of multidisciplinary scientific research consist of interactions between whole departments at different institutes around the globe, the Weizmann Institute team gathered representatives from each discipline and put them shoulder-to-shoulder in the same lab—an innovative new approach to scientific collaboration.

"Wherever you have contact between disciplines, that's where new ideas form because you are inspired by your environment and you can sometimes bridge concepts that you otherwise wouldn't be able to bridge," says Salomon. 'The idea for VTP never would have come up if we hadn't sat together and bridged the different disciplines we're in."

DR. AVIGDOR SCHERZ

The story of bacteriochlorophyll (Bchl)-VTP begins in 1990 in a hallway of the Ullmann Building at the Weizmann Institute, where Dr. Yoram Salomon, who at the time was conducting research on the role of hormones in tumor biology as a professor in the Department of Biological Services, ran into his younger brother's former high school classmate, Dr. Avigdor Scherz, then an associate professor in the Institute's Department of Biological Chemistry.

Driven to cure the cancer of a recently diagnosed member of his own family, Scherz had switched the focus of his lab from plant photosynthesis to chlorophyll-based cancer drugs. At this chance meeting in the corridor, he asked Salomon whether he had any cancer cells on which to test his new development. Salomon offered Scherz melanoma cells. "Our collaboration began at that moment," recalls Scherz.
By 1991, the two professors had co-opted their labs and gathered together a team of some eight scientists representing different disciplines and varying developmental stages in the life of a new treatment—from basic research to the pharmaceutical industry to clinical application.

"What we developed is a kind of closed circle, wherein there was a very intimate level of interaction between all the branches," explains Scherz. Their idea was to create the ideal feedback mechanism, whereby expertise from all areas could inform each other, creating the most efficient route to test new ideas and discover solutions. "We didn't just want the group to be multidisciplinary in the sense of having different people from different disciplines communicate together; we had our sights set on developing in all scientists involved a multidisciplinary way of thinking. Later on this was accomplished by a daily and completely transparent communication with the industrial partner's experts. This model for collaboration represents an entirely new scientific approach."

The concept of the unique new lab's development, however, was not entirely new. VTP takes its basic idea from its predecessor, Photodynamic Therapy" (PDT). In classical PDT, a cancer patient is injected with a light-sensitive pigment-based chemical ("sensitizer") that when exposed to light forms radicals that in turn excite oxygen molecules to oxidize, thus creating a toxic internal environment that kills tumor cells.

While it is an effective technique, the problem with classical PDT is that the sensitizers used show no tissue or organ selectivity, need hours to days to absorb into the tumor cells before treatment, and slowly exit the body afterward. The result is that patients continue to be sensitive to regular light and cannot go outside for several weeks or months after the treatment; since they are at risk of being burned by the light of the sun. Moreover, current sensitizers enable treatment of shallow tumors because of their limited physico-chemical properties.

Until Scherz and Salomon's lab, scientists had not figured out a way to harness effectively the photosensitization capabilities of chlorophyll in the photodynamic treatment, since in their native form these molecules present extremely low solubility disabling their use as vascular photosensitizers. Scherz's lab discovered ways to modify the hydrophobicity of the chlorophylls. But there was still work to be done. Although the chlorophyll-based drug was a big improvement over existing sensitizers, the type of light (i.e., sunlight) required to excite it could only penetrate into tissue at relatively shallow depths. Hence, Scherz proposed the use of a different kind of chlorophyll, namely, a type of Bchl that exists in the depths of the ocean and relies on infrared light (which can penetrate more deeply into human tissue) to photosynthesize. It turned out, in experiments conducted in the two labs, that this discovery enabled the first successful treatments of melanoma tumors and consequently, patent application in 1993 for non-toxic chlorophyll-based sensitizers to be used in PDT.

"It had a lot of advantages over the pigments that were used at the time," says Scherz. "Namely, chlorophyll doesn't stay in the system very long. After all, it's in every piece of lettuce we eat."

In 1995, Scherz and Salomon's lab patented the first PDT containing Bchl-based sensitizer, and in 1999 a more water-soluble version of it: Tookad. This name, which is the Hebrew wording for "the center or warmth of light," was coined after a passage in the Bible, that deals with a cure delivered by God to humans. The birth of Tookad marked the dawn of Bchl-VTP and a possible new age of cancer management.

DR. YORAM SALOMON

According to Dr. Salomon, who did his B.Sc, M.Sc, and Ph.D. in biochemistry at the Hebrew University jn Jerusalem before becoming a professor at the Weizmann Institute, the unique kind of collaboration that gave rise to Tookad would not likely take place outside of the Weizmann Institute or outside of Israel, for that matter. "I have to give the Institute itself credit because they made our collaboration very easy," he says. "There are no barriers there. It's a very cooperative environment."

"We use our knowledge and intuition to find solutions that work, then go backward to understand in greater detail why they worked. Most scientists around the world function in the opposite way..."

As for Israeli science in general, Salomon says that the Institute's approval of the lab's avantgarde approach is indicative of a general trend in the country's scientific culture. "Rather than conduct years and years of testing on chlorophyll, for instance, we just jumped to the end and said, 'Does it work? Good. Now, let's see how it works,' he explains. "We use our knowledge and intuition to find solutions that work, then go backward to understand in greater detail why they worked. Most scientists around the world function in the opposite way, so we really operate against the dogma."

It's for that reason the lab's initial findings, while extremely impressive, were rejected out-of-hand by the scientific community at large and why it took so long—nearly five years—to get their methodology tested in clinical trials.

"Initially, we had lots of problems; much of what we did was not accepted by colleagues in the field. Our papers were refused by labs around the world; they wouldn't even test it before they rejected it," says Salomon.

For instance, because classical PDT required a lag time of 24 hours or more between injection of the sensitizes and illumination of the infected tissues (in order for the drug to penetrate into the cells), the scientific community was apt to reject VTP's biochemical mechanism, which required immediate or simultaneous illumination in order to be effective. "We had to work very hard to change the scientific community's status quo," he says.

It wasn't until Scherz and Salomon convinced Dutch pharmaceutical company Steba Beheer NV to come on board in 1996 that other institutes agreed to start testing Tookad in pre-clinical trials. Says Salomon, "Slowly, but surely, our methodology was taken seriously."

Rather than classical PDT, which targets the tumor cells themselves, VTP targets the blood vessels that supply the tumors. According to Salomon, the idea to cut off blood flow to the tumor was also not a new one. But the problem with the chemicals used in anti-angiogenic therapies (i.e., therapies that inhibit the growth of blood vessels) is that the drugs used only antagonize the creation of the vessels, but don't end their construction completely. When the treatment stops, the blood vessels begin to grow again. In conjunction, there is the issue of drug resistance.
By contrast, VTP completely destroys the blood vessels that feed the tumor; the tumor becomes schemic, necrotic, and is finally eradicated and carried out of the body by the immune system.

With VTP, doctors first conduct an MRI and ultrasound to map out the tumor and establish a plan of attack. The drug is infused into the bloodstream via an IV, and while it is continually distributed throughout the body, the tumor area is illuminated with a series of carefully placed fiber optic lasers (so as to confine the illumination as close as possible to the treated zone). Within approximately 10 minutes, the illuminated tumor blood vessels narrow and fill with clots. Blood flow to the tumor stops. Five minutes later, more than 90% of the drug is cleared from the bloodstream.

The best part is that there are no side effects to VTP. There is absolutely no damage to tissue or cells that are not illuminated, and none of the three elements that comprise VTP— Bchl, oxygen, and infrared light—are toxic in and of themselves. But together, they're a lethal combination—for tumors.

Currently, Tookad is being tested in advanced Phase 2 clinical trials in France (for a degenerative eye disease called macular degeneration); in the UK, on prostate cancer patients with no previous treatment history who chose VTP as their first therapy; and in Canada, at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto and Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, where they are conducting "salvage therapy" aimed at curing patients with a recurrence of prostate cancer after first treatment radiation. Phase 3 testing is scheduled to take place this summer.

DR. ALEXANDER BRANDIS

While those clinical trials are taking place, the Weizmann Institute group continues to develop an arsenal of new compounds, aimed at different types of cancer, regimes of treatment, and diagnostics.

The chief molecular engineer who is enabling the synthesis of the new compounds is Dr. Alexander Brandis, a Ph.D. in chemistry and technology of natural products from the Lomonosov Institute of Fine Chemical Technolqgyjn Moscow, Russia, and a double postdoctorate in biochemical studies on chlorophyll and bacteriochlorophyll from the Weizmann Institute in Scherz's lab.

For Brandis, working on the VTP project came as a welcome surprise. It was merely by chance that he had heard of the Weizmann Institute team and their work at one of the first meetings that was allowed to take place of the USSR's Society of Jewish Scientists and Engineers in Moscow in 1991.

"When Gorbachev came into power, there were a lot of new things in the air, and a lot of Jewish societies started in Moscow. This was one of them," explains Brandis. "I participated in the Societies' Israel Science Day, and just happened to pass my CV to one of the representatives from the Weizmann Institute who was there."
Brandis had been working on compounds for PDT for several years and, in fact, engineered one of the first sensi-tizers for use in PDT. "Photodynamic therapy was extremely interesting to me because it was a new area with so many potential applications," he says.

On the afternoon of Israel Science Day, Brandis received a call from the Weizmann Institute representative encouraging him to apply to do his postdoc in Rehovot. "It was Israel's Independence Day, and my father's birthday," recalls Brandis. "I will never forget that day."

Brandis moved to Israel from Moscow in 1992 to join the fledgling team. "From the moment I met Scherz, we started coordinating," he says. "It was an ideal adoption. I found exactly the place where I had to be to continue my career."

The Israeli approach to scientific research was a shock to Brandis's system. "Although our lab in Moscow was a very well-established alma mater, we had very little direct contact with labs around the world," explains Brandis. During that time in the USSR, scientists had access to research papers from around the globe but did not conduct many cooperative efforts with scientists abroad. "For me, working in Israel opened up this whole new world of international collaboration. After 15 years, this global approach is still extremely exciting to me."

The VTP team took that collaboration to a whole different level for Brandis. "In Moscow, my lab used to synthesize a compound, then test it, then send the sample to another institute, then wait for their reply," he explains. "The first time I came to the lab at Weizmann, it was so strange to see all the scientists multitasking. Here, you don't have a department where everyone does his own work, individually; you have a few people who do a lot of different things.

"In our group now, the close proximity between disciplines not only makes the process much faster, but the collaborative work sharpens your intuition. Getting feedback every day and discussing problems in real time makes a huge difference to one's state of alertness."

That's not to say that the experience hasn't had its challenges. While he loves the multidisciplinary structure of the group, it also makes creating compounds more difficult, since there are more factors to consider. "Rather than just synthesize new compounds that will be effective from a physical standpoint, we have to think ahead about whether they will be viable from a clinical and pharmaceutical perspective," explains Brandis. 'The compound may be effective, but what's it worth if it causes bad side effects, or if it's too expensive to be mass produced?"
Since so many cures have been serendipitously discovered (i.e., while searching for a cure to one affliction, a researcher stumbles upon a cure for a totally unrelated problem), Brandis says the group's new approach to contextual thinking is extremely challenging, since his natural inclination is to follow' his molecules to see where they lead. "Participating in the group has required a real switch from question-oriented research to objective-oriented research."

On a personal note, adjusting to Israel has also been a big challenge for Brandis, who although Jewish, had never been to Israel until he came to the Weizmann Institute. "Coming to Israel was itself an adventure. It was very strange for me to go from living in Moscow, with 15-million people, to living in Rehovot," says Brandis. "But, I met my wife here and now we have two daughters. I am very happy."

EFRAT RUBINSTEIN, M.Sc.

One of the most intriguing new compounds the team is working on is a more sophisticated version of Bchl, one that exclusively targets tumor blood vessels so that the drug does not have the potential to affect all tissues that are subjected to light subsequent to infusion. Instead, it only affects tumor vessels, so it's possible to hone in even closer on the targeted tissues.

The woman behind this new innovation-in-progress is Efrat Rubenstein, one of 14 Ph.D. students hailing from disciplines including computational chemistry, chemistry, biology, and pharmacology. These students comprise the basic research arm of the group and whom Scherz „ dubs "the team's lifeline."

"My new development capitalizes on the fact that some tumor blood vessels—including those that feed brain tumors, metastatic breast, melanoma, and lung tumors—have special receptors," explains Rubinstein, a student of both the Institute's Departments of Plant Sciences and Biological Regulation. "I am adding a sort of 'homing device' to the sensitizer in order to target these specific receptors.
"The benefit of this new drug is that because it's more directed, there can be no accidental peripheral damage to 'good vessels' and tissues surrounding the tumor vessels, and it will spare as much as possible the collagen supporting matrix, which plays a big role in the body's natural healing process."

Since commencing her Ph.D. in 2001, Rubinstein has synthesized, developed, and tested in vitro a large number of VTP agents. "Before you can check the agents on animals (in vivo) you have to test them extensively on cell cultures (in vitro)," explains Rubinstein. "But there is a problem in the correlation: The cell environment is very different from the animal environment and oftentimes what responds in vitro does not respond or work in vivo."

According to Rubinstein, the process of in vitro testing can be extremely taxing. "It's very hard mentally because you experience so many disappointments along the way." She says that there is often no correlation between what should work theoretically and what does work in practical application. "You have to be very strong to continue."

'This sort of frustration is the real test of one student or one scientist versus another," comments Scherz. "Either you take it in stride and learn to benefit from it, or it breaks you down."

It's precisely because there are so many disappointments that the moments of accomplishment are so exhilarating. For instance, Rubinstein says she will never forget the moment that one of her sensitizers elicited a positive response to a cancer sample. "I was at the special lab in Jerusalem, about halfway through testing some 250 samples, all of which had produced a flat line," she recalls. 'Then I put this cancer tumor sample into the machine and the line started to peak, indicating that a reaction was indeed taking place.

"At first, I thought the machine was broken," she says. 'Then I tested and retested and retested again, and I realized it wasn't broken at all. I was onto something! As long as I live, I will never forget that moment. It was August 23, 2004. We submitted the patent one year later."

Rubinstein, a new mother of two, completed her B.Pharm. at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1995. Straight out of school, she began to work at Super-Pharm Pharmacy in Rishon LeZion, a position she kept throughout the duration of her M.Sc. in pharmacology at Tel Aviv University, and right up until she started her Ph.D. "I wasn't happy just to work in a pharmacy," she says. "Something was always missing. After my master's, I understood that I had to do research full-time, but it had to be in a field with clinical applications."

That's when she discovered the group at the Weizmann Institute. "I can't think of any other place where I would be able to be involved, step-by-step, from the very beginning of separating molecules and synthesizing them in vitro to seeing my agents being used in pre-clinical and clinical applications," she says. "It is impossible to describe the joy of nurturing this little molecule into something that really works. Being part of this group has been a dream come true."

According to Rubinstein, who will submit her Ph.D. thesis on April 30, 2007, being part of the group has been a very special experience for other reasons, too. "When I look at the papers and abstracts from the big conferences and see how many authors and university departments and research institutes are involved, and how much support projects receive from big companies, it makes me very proud," she says. "We are only a little group, a few people, and we are not accompfishing less than them.
"When it comes to finding a cure for cancer, there is still a long way to go," she says. "But we have already made a contribution that has been way beyond our expectations."

DR. NATALIA KOUDINOVA

As Rubinstein says, there is a big difference between in vitro and in vivo testing. That's where Dr. Natalia Koudinova comes in. As head of Steba Israel's Biological Unit, Koudinova serves as an essential conduit between the lab at Weizmann and the pharmaceutical company.

Since she assumed the position three years ago, Koudinova has screened dozens of compounds in vivo, between those produced by Steba's R&D Department and those produced by the lab at the Weizmann Institute. Altogether, she has recommended only six for pre-clinical or Phase 1 clinical trials.

According to Scherz, Koudinova is an essential member of the Weizmann team, since she is in a very unique position to diffuse the tension inherent between the lab and the pharmaceutical company, or between research and industry related primarily to issues of intellectual property (IP). "Dr. Koudinova and the rest of the Steba team bridge a very important gap and replace natural hostility with constructive cooperation," says Scherz. "Without this collaboration, several of our compounds might never have made it into circulation and the development of others would take forever."

Like Brandis, Koudinova came to the Weizmann Institute group quite by accident. Her husband, a neuroscientist from Moscow, was invited to participate in a project at the Department of Brain Research at the Weizmann Institute in 1997. She followed him to Israel. After working for two years on her postdoc on Alzheimer's disease at the Institute's Department of Neurobiology, Koudinova, a medical doctor who completed her Ph.D. on lipid metabolism in Alzheimer's at the Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow, met Dr. Salomon.

"I never anticipated I would end up in the field of PDT," says Koudinova. "But before I knew it, I was developing the animal prostate cancer and bone metastases models." It was Koudinova who conducted the first study that showed that Tookad was a successful treatment for human prostate carcinoma and bone metastases. More than 80% of the animals used in preliminary tests were completely cured of large
tumors-via VTP. It was these tests that became the backbone of Koudinova's second postdoc, which she completed in 2004. Just after she finished her degree, her Israeli visa expired. "All of a sudden, it looked as though I would have to leave Israel, which was such a pity because I loved Israel and the group and I didn't want to go anywhere else," recalls Koudinova, the team's only non-Jewish member. "Although science is a very international thing, when you are working in a lab, you are not just doing science; you are working with people," she says. "The lab environment at the Weizmann Institute was unlike any other lab I had worked in before. It was an open, communicative, social environment. I really enjoyed it."
Salomon and Scherz took action on Koudinova's behalf and wrote letters to the Ministry of the Interior appealing to the authorities to grant Koudinova an extension. "She was a key member of our team," comments Scherz. "The amount of knowledge and skills that she had acquired over the years was essential for the fast development of new products. It was really in the best interests of the State of Israel to let her stay." Koudinova was awarded temporary residency (giving her three more years) in 2004. "Finally, I could breathe a sigh of relief," she says. "I was very lucky."

Around the same time, Steba decided to establish an independent affiliate lab in Israel almost exclusively geared to supporting new research and development in the field of VTP. The timing couldn't have been more perfect," says Koudinova.
Then three years later, at the start of 2007, Koudinova found herself in a similar pickle. "Again, we applied to the Ministry of the Interior," she says. "Only this time, I got extra lucky and they awarded me permanent residency. So, now I can live the rest of my years in Israel worry-free.

"It's been strange to have my professional scientific life tied in so closely to my personal life," she notes. "But in the end, I love my work, I love this country, and I know that this is where my family belongs."

DR. SMADAR SCHREIBER

According to Salomon, the sort of tension that exists between the research and pharmaceutical fields of medical development tends to exist similarly between the research and clinical fields. In the case of VTP, which requires far fewer human and hospital resources—and, ultimately, less expense tharr traditional cancer therapies—this tension is particularly pronounced. "In medicine, there is usually opposition to new approaches," says Salomon, who explains that there is also the issue of having to train in order to learn how to implement the new technique.

Dr. Smadar Schreiber is a clear exception. The practicing doctor in the PDT Unit at the Assaf Harofe Medical Center near Tel Aviv, Schreiber's primary contribution to the team is her firsthand experience.

"I am actually putting current photodynamic technology into practice," says Schreiber, who uses PDT to treat dermatological ailments such as skin lesions, viral warts and other viral lesions, psoriasis, acne, and of course, cancer. "The patients react very well to the treatment. Side effects are local and transient, and although there is usually an inflammatory reaction for a few days following the treatment, it only takes three or four weeks after one treatment for the lesions to disappear completely and to be replaced with heafthy, younger-looking skin."

In addition to bringing firsthand PDT experience to the group, Schreiber was the first to test Tookad-VTP in pre-dinical trials. "I was the first to test the mode of application and successfully demonstrate that it worked against tumors in animal models," explains Schreiber. "I think this was a very important contribution to the group."

It's worth noting that Schreiber did not get her start in PDT. Since she graduated from medical school at the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa in 1986, she worked first as a physician in the IDF, then as a researcher at a manufacturer of light-based devices for medical and cosmetic purposes, and finally as a developer of clinical protocols for doctoral students around the world. It wasn't until she began her residency in plastic surgery at the Weizmann Institute in 1997 that all of her myriad work experience seemed to come together. Before she knew it, she had extended her basic science requirement into a Ph.D. project on the effects of bacteri-ochlorophylls on tumors and became a vital member of the VTP team. "I never thought I would end up in this field," she says. "But what I am doing now really is a combination of everything I have learned."

According to Schreiber, this flexibility to combine the various elements of her knowledge base into one useful application is unique to Israeli science. "The standards of science and technology are very high in Israel," says Schreiber. "At the same time^there is always"a. place for innovation and the opportunity to pursue radically new ideas."

VTP is one such pursuit. "Photodynamic treatments have such great potential. What is being done now is only the beginning; it is going to evolve to apply to many medical specialties and many different usages," says the mother of three from Gan Hatikvah, who names gastric cancers, internal infections, restenosis, hema-tology, and melanoma among the likely future applications.

To date, VTP has been tested on colon carcinomas, prostate cancers, sarcomas, liver cancers, breast tumors, brain tumors, pancreatic cancers, and various metastases. According to Scherz, the group's immediate objective over the next two years is to cover the entire field of prostate ailments, from cancer and metastases to enlarged prostate and benign prostate treatment at various stages. After that, the team intends to tackle nonlocalized cancers such as leukemia. "Right now, we can only use this method to treat cancers wherein we know their location," explains Salomon. "Cancers without specific locations are on our list of upcoming challenges." "But," says Scherz with a hopeful smile, "the more we advance, the more the possibility for future developments and future applications opens up."
"In the end, one thing is certain," adds Salomon. "The more we collaborate, the greater our chances of success".

Source: Jenny Hazan. Cooperating for a cure. Lifestyles International edition: www.lifestylesmagazine.com (May 2007) pp.33-39

The Weizmann Institute Science Festival: Smart Fun for the Whole Family

Where: The Weizmann Institute Science, Rehovot, Herzl Street, 5 min walk from Rehovot Train Station

When: April 23-24, 2008

This year’s Garoon Family Science Festival at the Weizmann Institute will be bigger and better than ever. Adults and children alike can experience the thrill of scientific discovery through a wide variety of exhibits, competitions, performances, workshops, tours, lectures and interactive demonstrations geared to every age group.

Among the activities to choose from: interactive workshops on everything from acrobatics to thinking games and “scientific” ice cream; talks on the science of films and techniques of film animation; panel discussions with scientists; lectures on current science topics; as well as the chance to learn how to extract DNA from lettuce or build a rocket. A special exhibit will show art created by children for the “Draw Me a Scientist” contest.

This year’s Science Festival will also feature an assortment of musical performances and workshops including “Journey from Beach to Drum,” with Chen Cymbalista and the Ashkelon Chamber Orchestra, as well as Gypsy-Balkan music, wandering Brazilian performances combining dance, movement and rhythm, a show featuring new musical instruments and a workshop in constructing musical instruments from recycled materials and junk.

This year’s contests, which require advance registration, are the “flying egg,” and a team treasure hunt. For more information and contest registration: 08-934-3959.

The festival will take place April 23-24 from 10:30 to 18:00. Information will be available to the public through the festival switchboard: 08-934-6090.

Journalists (only) who would like more information can call the Weizmann Institute Publications and Media Relations Department: Malka Barkan: 08-934-3856 or Tamar Gilboa: 08-934-3851, 054-263-8877.

Source: Weizmann Institute Media Department

Weak dollar drives Rehovot HiTech company to cut staff by 6%

Semiconductor metrology specialist Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. (Rehovot, Israel) has confirmed that it is laying off 6 percent of its 288 employees. The company's chief financial officer Dror David was cited in the Israel newspaper Globes as saying the step is mostly due to the low exchange rate of the dollar against the New Israeli Shekel (NIS). He added that the cost of the cuts will be taken in the company's results for the third quarter of 2008.

Nova is traded on the Nasdaq and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Its revenues in 2007 totaled $58.1 million on which it made a net loss of $3.9 million.

Almost all the company's sales are made in U.S. dollars, while much of its costs, including salaries, are incurred in New Israeli Shekels (NIS). During 2007, the U.S. dollar devalued against the NIS by 9 percent. During the first two months of 2008, the dollar has devalued by a further 5.9 percent against the NIS. The devaluation had a negative impact on the company's operating expenses outside the U.S. in 2007, and Nova has said it is concerned that it might have a negative impact on its expenses in 2008.

The job cuts are expected across the board in Nova, and it is expected that half of the job cuts will be in Israel, where the company employs 181 workers. Nova serves all sectors of the IC manufacturing industry including logic, ASIC, foundries and memory manufactures. The company's customers are located in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, the U.S. and Europe. Asia Pacific accounted for 55 percent of Nova's revenues in 2007.

Nova's main revenue generator is its oxide CMP product line. Another reason of the cuts is the weakness in the equipment sector. In its annual report Nova said it expects wafer fab equipment annual spending to decline by 15 percent in 2008, relative to 2007.

Source: Amir Ben-Artzi. Weak dollar drives Nova to cut staff by 6%. EE Times Europe (3 April 2008) [FullText]

Human skeletal remains found near Rehovot

Human skeletal remains were found this week next to an abandoned motorcycle on farmland east of Gedera. Rehovot police launched an investigation and will transfer the skull and bones to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute to be identified. After a farmer reported finding the motorcycle near one of his fields, detectives who arrived to investigate found the bones. The police located the owner of the motorcycle, who said he had sold it years ago. Police plan to search the area more thoroughly to determine whether the remains are related to a crime or a missing person. However, they have not ruled out the possibility that the skull and bones are archaeological remnants.

Source: Yigal Hai. Haaretz.com (4 April 2008) [FullText]

State Comptroller: Third of all public complaints justified, Rehovot complaint against police noted

State Comptroller: Third of all public complaints justified

Lindesntrauss states that majority of complaints lodged with him since 2007 are justified, including unjust property taxes, government offices without Russian speakers

State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss, the public ombudsman, has reviewed a total of 9,749 complaints in 2007, 33.7% of which he believes were justified.

Topping the list of offending institutions was the National Insurance Institute of Israel which faced 998 complaints, followed by the Israel Police which faced 577, complaints and the Justice Ministry which faced 355 complaints. The Finance Ministry, Interior Ministry, Education Ministry and Science, Culture and Sport Ministry are next on this list of top offenders.

National Watchdogs

Comptroller prevents firing of corruption investigator / Aviram Zino

State Comproller Lindenstraus orders Finance Minister not to fire Dr Yaron Zelicha, accountant responsible for prime minister's corruption investigations

Of the long list of complaints that were lodged with the state comptroller, 64% of all complaints lodged against the Transportation Ministry and 45% of complaints lodged against the police department and court system were found to have merit.

The overwhelming majority of all complaints, some 80% to be exact, were formally lodged by members of Knesset. Knesset Member Zevulun Orlev (National Union-National Religious Party) lodged 70% of these aforementioned complaints, with MK Ami Ayalon (Labor), MK Shelly Yacimovich (Labor), MK Arieh Eldad (NU-NRP), and MK Ran Cohen (Meretz) lodging two complaints apiece.

No Russian speakers available

Here are a few examples of the shortcoming and failings of our public institutions, as highlighted in the report presented by Lindenstrauss Wednesday:

A complaint lodged against the Ministry of Education indicated that a Russian speaker, who petitioned to have his foreign Doctorate degree evaluated with the ministry’s Division for Evaluation of Foreign Academic Degrees and Diplomas, was denied his claim because he had written the ministry in Russian and no Russian speakers were available to translate.

A Rehovot driver lodged a complaint with the city’s police department for their failure to locate and apprehend a fellow motorist which drove recklessly and threatened him while on the road. The complainant gave police officers the offender’s name, as well as two telephone numbers where he could be reached, but the police failed to follow up on the case and apprehend the offending party.

The complaint was found by the comptroller to have merit, as the Rehovot Police were clearly negligent in their investigation. The Police Department’s Central District Chief informed the comptroller’s office that disciplinary action will be taken against the three police officers involved in this case.

A resident of Dir Hanna in the Galilee petitioned the state comptroller after the town’s local council charged his son property taxes for a building that the son did not own. All charges owed by the alleged property owner were canceled, and the city’s property tax division was instructed not to collect property taxes from individuals until there is definitive proof that construction on the property is complete and it is fit for use... view article text in full at the original publisher web site, ynetnews.com

Rehovot Scientists Say Israel Water is Contaminated

Israeli Water May be Tainted with Pharmaceuticals

By Amihai Zippor

According to a Haaretz report, researchers from Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University who are studying irrigation water in Israel found traces of pharmaceuticals in it.

“I found a variety of drugs and I am sure that further testing will reveal more types of pharmaceuticals,” said Dr. Benny Chefetz of Hebrew University's Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot

“We have not tested groundwater, but we have found that some of these medications are not held back by soil but move through it rapidly. I have almost no doubt that some could get into the drinking water,” Chefetz said.

A recent study in the US found dozens of American cities have pharmaceuticals in their drinking water.

If such a situation is found in Israel, it could be extremely problematic since the country is so small and already suffering a water crisis.

A week and a half ago, officials from Israel Water Authority warned the low amount of rain over the past ten years may cause Lake Kinneret, Israel's main water source, to go below the red line.

If that occurs, the salt content will rise to levels unsafe for drinking; and tapping into other already depleted resources could do harm to the underground aquifers.

Source: Amihai Zippor. IHC News Analysis (30 March 2008) [FullText]