I thought I’d take some time out to look at some recent scientific and medical achievements emanating from Israel.

The European Lung Foundation reports that Israeli doctors at the Technion, in Haifa, are developing a breath test that detects cancer before the symptoms arise.

The study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, found that different types of cancer cells release different chemicals from their surface. These chemicals are released in the breath.

So once you know this the next step is to create a detector. This is what the Israeli doctors have done:

Professor Abraham Kuten, one of the researchers, believes this machine has the potential to save hundreds of lives by detecting a number of cancers in a single non-invasive test. However, more research is needed before we will see an ‘electronic nose’ in a doctor’s surgery.

Of course, those advocating academic boycotts of Israel on supposedly political grounds would not be interested in co-operating with Israel on just this sort of research which could have such immense value to all mankind.

There is still some way to go with the research and development but a successful detector could be a huge stride forward in the early diagnosis of a number of different cancers.

Another article on the Israel21C website reports the development of an anti-bacterial fabric.

The same bacteria that make your sweaty socks smell are responsible for some 1.7 million hospital-associated infections in the US alone. An Israeli antibacterial fabric may offer a solution.

…

The fact is, fabric-bred bacteria aren’t just a smelly problem. They are also responsible for hospital-acquired infections affecting nearly nine percent of patients in both developed and resource-poor countries, according to the World Health Organization. That translates to some 1.7 million hospital-associated infections in the United States – causing or contributing to 99,000 deaths each year – and 25,000 infection-related deaths in European hospitals. Most often, the bacteria gain a foothold through wounds or foreign bodies such as catheters.

This is not a new idea but previously, once the material is washed, it loses its anti-bacterial effectiveness. The Israeli material, developed by Professor Aharon Gedanken at Bar Ilan University, is impregnated with zinc-oxide nano-particles which do not wash out even at high temperature. There is already much interest across the world and this is another project which could be of huge benefit to many hospital patients and also reduce deaths by hospital-acquired infections.

Another H/T to Israel21C in their story about a new diabetes drug just approved in the US by the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA).

The drug concerned is Alpha-1 Antitryspin (AAT). It has been developed from research at Ben Gurion University by Dr Eli Lewis. The drug could possibly reverse type 1 diabetes.

This treatment approach, developed by researchers from BGU and the University of Colorado, could potentially eliminate the need for daily insulin shots in recently diagnosed individuals, whose native circulating AAT molecules appear to be inactivated by high glucose.
It can block inflammation so effectively that the immune response is modified, facilitating transplant acceptance to treat diabetes.

Another life saver and life enhancer developed by Israeli science and medicine.

Two more Israel21C reports are worthy of special attention as they are both of major importance in their specific fields. The first for depression and the second for the scourge of our time, HIV.

Israeli researchers claim that by analysing social media, including blogs, they can determine the mood of those posting to social media, Sr Yair Neumann from Bar-llan told Israel21C:

“The software program was designed to find depressive content hidden in language that did not mention the obvious terms like ‘depression or ‘suicide’,” Neuman relates. “A psychologist knows how to spot various emotional states through intuition. Here, we have a program that does this methodically through the innovative use of ‘Web intelligence’.”

“I emphasize that the tool cannot substitute for an expert. It can provide a powerful way to screen for depression through blogs and Facebook. It analyzes text – the written language – and it can help us to identify people who are presenting signs of depression,”

Let’s hope Neuman doesn’t analyse my blog. Yet it is sure logical that the way we write reflects our moods.

Meanwhile, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israeli researchers are helping to lead the fight against AIDS.

The therapy, developed by scientists from the university’s Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences and the Institute of Chemistry, destroys cells infected with HIV without damaging adjacent healthy cells. It is described in an article published last month in the scientific journal AIDS Research and Therapy.

To date, no therapy has succeeded in completely destroying HIV-infected cells. Current treatments only delay the development of the disease and make it more manageable. If treatment is halted, however, or the virus develops immunity to the cocktail of drugs now used, it can begin infecting new cells.

The new treatment fights HIV by causing infected cells to self-destruct. When the AIDS virus infects a cell, its DNA penetrates the cell, which then manufactures new HIV viruses that infect neighboring cells.

So Israel is playing its part in this important research into a disease that has devastated great swathes of Africa.

Finally, the Jerusalem Post has reported that at the Tel Aviv University nanobiologists are developing a chemotherapy treatment which targets cancer cells in tumours directly.

A major problem regarding chemotherapy is its nonselective effects. Chemotherapeutic agents are very effective against cancer cells but damage normal healthy cells in the patient’s body. The risks are numerous and include liver toxicity and bone marrow suppression that in some cases may even be life-threatening. The new nano-vehicle developed is meant to overcome these problems.

By coating the outer surface of the drug with a certain sugar, researchers succeeded in inducing the nano particles within it to selectively target tumor cells in mice. The coating sugar molecule, called Hyaluronan, was recognized by receptors on cancer cells, enabling delivery of the chemotherapy drug from the particles directly into these cells.

Selective delivery of the drug into tumors caused tumor arrest in the mice treated, and was potent as a 4-fold higher dose of the same drug when delivered in the conventional way.

These examples are just some of the current research projects amongst hundreds, if not thousands, being developed in Israel for the betterment of all mankind.

Those who seek to make life difficult for Israeli academics by boycotting and breaking contacts are surely not helping Palestinians, but, instead, risking that advanced science, medicine and engineering projects which could be beneficial to all are not being made available to their own countries’ scientists.

Sometimes I wonder whether academic boycotts are motivated more from jealousy that a small country like Israel can be leading the world in so many areas of science and medicine.