The Technion’s story has been intertwined with Israel’s for more than a century, from laying the foundations for a new nation to shaping its future.
A discovery by Prof. Ami Aronheim and his team at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology shows that the growth of cancerous tumors may actually combat cardiac dysfunction and reduce fibrosis, the scarring process that stiffens the heart muscle. “The failing heart can beat much better in the presence of cancer cells or a tumor,” said lead investigator Aronheim, dean of the Technion’s Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, speaking to The Times of Israel. “This is very surprising,” Aronheim said. Currently, no drugs exist that can reverse fibrosis or improve the heart muscle once it has been damaged, he…
NeuroKaire’s offices on Yigal Alon Street in Tel Aviv are about as far as one can get from the gleaming workspaces of a typical Israeli high-tech company. The parking lot is dark and dirty, the elevator creaks, and there is no doorman, nor a sea view, unlike the surrounding luxury towers. The surprise begins only after stepping through the wide office doors: giant microscopes, highly sophisticated robots, and some of the world’s most advanced medical equipment, all enabling one of the most complex biological feats in existence, turning ordinary blood cells into human brain cells. “We could have been, like…
A technology developed in the laboratory of Prof. Amit Meller from the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Biomedical Engineering marks a significant advancement toward rapid proteome analysis, with far-reaching implications for both fundamental research and disease diagnosis. A 2023 Nature opinion article identified the seven most important emerging technologies to watch—with single-molecule protein sequencing taking the top spot. The article highlighted the pivotal contributions of Prof. Meller’s research group in advancing key technologies toward the commercialization of protein sequencing systems, paving the way for a true revolution in biological and medical research. Since proteins are the body’s fundamental building blocks, their rapid and…
In a 1966 Hollywood film “Fantastic Voyage”, screenplay by Isaac Asimov, scientists are shrunk to a few millimeters and injected into the bloodstream of a dying scientist who has vital information. Their mission: Navigate to his brain and destroy a blood clot before returning to normal size. Fast forward: On sabbatical in Boston in the early 1980s, Rafael rocket engineer Gabriel Iddan encounters Israeli gastroenterologist, Eitan Scapa. “I can’t reach the small intestine with my endoscope,” he says. Jokingly, to Iddan: “Can you shrink a camera and transmitter small enough to swallow and travel through the intestines?” Iddan’s Israeli startup…
Shai Shen-Orr on the Future of Disease Modeling In this newly released podcast, Shai Shen-Orr, co-founder and chief scientist at CytoReason and professor at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, dives into the next frontier of health care: disease modeling. He explains how CytoReason transforms today’s overwhelming biological data into actionable insights that power […]
When he was just 11 years old, Hagai Suissa suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident that left him fighting for his life. Twenty-six years later, Dr. Suissa, now 37, has come full circle — returning to the operating room, this time as a neurosurgeon at Ziv Medical Center in Safed. Just a month ago, Suissa completed his residency in neurosurgery at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya and began working as a senior physician in Ziv’s newly opened neurosurgery department. For him, the moment marked the culmination of a journey that began in 1999, when he was…
At 15, when a neurological condition took Tobias Weinberg’s ability to speak, aspects of his personality became more difficult to express. Typing to communicate, he struggled to keep up in conversations, especially to make the jokes or sarcastic comments that had been his norm. And his first text-to-voice device was monotone, with Mexican or Spanish accents but not his native Argentinian. “The monotone voices, the timing of interjections and conveying my personality through this new way of communication was definitely frustrating,” wrote Weinberg, now a doctoral student and Siegel PiTech Fellow at Cornell Tech. As part of the Matter of…
Every day, millions of people are discharged after extended hospital stays, but matching these patients with appropriate care facilities can be arduous, often reliant on months-old, inaccurate data. Now, a text message-based, hybrid computer-human system that regularly updates both patients’ and care facilities’ availability statuses, developed by a Cornell doctoral student, is smoothing that time-consuming process. The system was tested at a hospital in Hawaii for 14 months, beginning in early 2022, and helped place nearly 50 patients in care facilities. In fact, the system worked so well, the hospital is still using it. “I worked closely with the people…
Imagine being able to peer into your immune system and see not just how healthy you are today, but how your body fights, adapts, and ages over time. Journalist David Ewing Duncan recently had the chance to do that. Instead of a standard blood test, he tried a new kind of immune analysis. This test doesn’t look at a handful of markers. It examines nearly a million immune signals with advanced technology and machine learning to create a personal immune health score. The idea is to detect illness before symptoms appear, understand how people will respond to treatments, and even…
IceCure Medical’s tumor-freezing treatment ProSense has nabbed FDA approval, making it the first medical device of its kind to be endorsed for the local treatment of breast cancer. The Israeli medical technology company saw its shares jump more than 17% afterhours Friday, Oct. 3, after the company announced the approval. Shares lost some of their gains by Monday morning and were trading up about 8% from Friday’s close. Treatment with ProSense involves a minimally invasive outpatient procedure that aims to destroy tumors by freezing them, all without the need for surgical removal of breast tissue. This approach also allows for…
Pigs have long carried a bad reputation. They are often described as dirty, greedy animals that eat everything in sight and spend their days lying around. In reality, none of these stereotypes are true. Pigs are intelligent, have a highly developed sense of smell, and like to stay clean. They often roll in mud, not because of laziness but to cool down and protect themselves from parasites. But there is another, far more important fact about pigs: they are now at the center of a medical revolution that could transform the future of organ transplantation. With demand for donor organs…
Their music is one of the most influential examples of mind-altering psychedelic rock. But scientists say listening to Pink Floyd really does have an effect on your brain cells – and could make them more susceptible to future treatments for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The surprising finding comes from a study in which researchers played the band’s 1979 hit, Another Brick In The Wall, and monitored the impact it had on brain cells in humans and mice. They found the low-frequency sounds in the song made cells ‘vibrate’ and caused certain parts of the brain to ‘light up’, indicating greater activity,…