Dr. Yaacov Hana from the Weizmann Institute, one of the Krill Prize winners: The prizes give me energy to continue research

Today there will be an award ceremony for ten outstanding scientists at the beginning of their independent scientific careers.

Just about a month ago, Dr. Hanna, from the Department of Molecular Genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, won the Rapoport Prize in the Debut Prize category for a young researcher. Today it was also learned that he won the Krill Prize from the Wolf Foundation, along with nine other young scientists. The prize will be awarded today at a ceremony to be held in Jerusalem.

In an interview with the Hedaan website following his second consecutive win, Dr. Hana talks about the science for which he is being recognized: "In our laboratory, we take adult cells from a person, such as a skin cell or a blood system cell, and return it to an embryonic state, or in other words, reset it, delete all the information that exists in it and returned it to the initial state that defines an embryonic stem cell - the initial cells in the development of the embryo that have the ability to produce any other cell again."

"This is important in transplants - patients who need a liver or insulin-producing cells have difficulty finding donors for these organs, and even when they receive a transplant, the transplant recipients need immunosuppression to hold the transplant, so the idea is how to produce from the patient genetically identical cells with the same DNA, which can produce any A cell he needs, to produce stem cells from the patient himself - Personalized Therapy. The goal is to return cells to an embryonic state (which was first done by Japanese scientists under his leadership of Shinya Yamanaka who won the Nobel Prize) makes this possibility realistic."

"We are trying to understand how this process works, how we come and insert four genes, express them and they know how to turn the cell backwards. This process is very inefficient. Very few cells succeed in doing it and even fewer do it correctly. We are trying to learn how the process works, to make it effective and normal without damaging the DNA. That the cells are normal and healthy."

"The second avenue of research is to produce models for the study of diseases in humans. Today we are very limited in studying genetic diseases because it is very difficult to obtain tissue from humans. Many times by the time a disease such as diabetes or Parkinson's develops it is too late, the affected cells have already been destroyed, so why do a biopsy almost The process allows us today to come to genetic disease patients with a known or unknown mutation to produce induced stem cells (IPS) from a skin biopsy, they can be grown in huge quantities without disturb the patient again, and produce the neurons or insulin-producing cells. These cells can be compared in a patient versus a healthy person and understand what is wrong with the patient, why these cells enter stress and start to degenerate. Moreover, these cells can be used, for example, to search for life-saving drugs life and therefore there is great interest in the pharmaceutical industry to use stem cell-based platforms to search for new drugs."

What do you have to say about the award?
"The Krill Prize is a prize given by the Wolf Foundation to sciences that are in the first years of their independence - when they get their own laboratory. It is given in different fields - biology, chemistry, engineering. It is a very respectable prize. It gives us energy to continue working in a field that is very difficult and very competitive. The Rapoport Prize is an award on behalf of the Rapoport Foundation given to both scientists and artists for their professional achievements, and this is also gratifying and I hope that over time we will prove that we deserve this recognition."

What is it like to work at the Weizmann Institute?

"I opened my laboratory at the institute two years ago, we established a very large laboratory in terms of infrastructure, and 17 team members work there. I am very satisfied and happy at the institute, there is tremendous financial support for our laboratory, because the work costs a lot of money, there are scientists here with different specialties, and we We are greatly helped by this professionalism. It is a very small place, but with a lot of knowledge, it allows us to both diversify and improve the quality of research, the Weizmann Institute is a paradise for scientists."