Biological clocks

Guest of the section: Prof. Ilana Gouzes - Tel Aviv University "The great advantage of the Weizmann Institute is its ability to give research students the most advanced tools and equipment, so that they go out prepared for the world. It is an excellent school for science"

Prof. Uriel Littoir with the (then) research student, Prof. Ilana Gouzes. scientific environment
Prof. Uriel Littoir with the (then) research student, Prof. Ilana Gouzes. scientific environment

Prof. Ilana Gozes (then Ilana Alon) came to the Weizmann Institute of Science following an announcement about the opening of a direct path to a doctorate in life sciences at the Feinberg seminary, and was one of the graduates of the first cohort. "I wanted to study in a direct path to a doctorate degree. Another consideration was the possibility, unique to the Weizmann Institute of Science, to study in an environment that is exclusively scientific, and this at a world-renowned research institute."

Her familiarity with the institute began even before that, when as an undergraduate student at Tel Aviv University she came twice as a summer student to the institute's laboratories. These periods, and in addition to them the periods in which she trained in various laboratories before starting her doctoral thesis, gave her a comprehensive view of the research being conducted at the institute, and brought her together with a variety of researchers and research methods.

Her research, in the laboratory of Prof. Uriel Littoir in the Department of Neurobiology, dealt with the characterization of the skeletal protein of the nerve cells in the brain, and the characteristic changes that occur in it during the development and maturation of the nervous system. "The great advantage of the institute is its ability to give the research students the most advanced tools and equipment, so that they go out prepared for the world. This is an excellent school for science," says Prof. Guzes. "I worked day and night and enjoyed every moment: the intellectual challenge, studying subjects that interested me, the company of talented students, and also the personal treatment at the seminary." She remembers working alongside Prof. Littoir as an enriching experience. The two keep in touch, and even published a joint article - about twenty years after Prof. Gozes finished her studies at the institute.

With the completion of her doctorate, for which she received the Landau Prize, and equipped with a post-doctoral scholarship named after Chaim Weizman, she embarked on two periods of post-doctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Salk Institute in San Diego. During this period, when the first buds of genetic engineering methods appeared, the new methods began to pay off, as she researches the properties of neuropeptides - short proteins that regulate the creation, growth and function of nerve cells. In the research she carried out as a senior scientist and associate professor at the Weizmann Institute, upon her return from San Diego, in collaboration with Prof. Mati Friedkin, she was able to identify and clone one of the first genes encoding such a neuropeptide, VIP, which is responsible, among other things, for regulating the biological clock.

Her research on neuropeptides, a field in which she is engaged and in which she specializes to this day as a full professor in the Department of Medical Biochemistry at the Tel Aviv University School of Medicine, led to the discovery of a new peptide, which is responsible for the development and survival of the brain, and works by binding to the skeletal proteins of cells the sadness Her research today covers the entire range of properties of this peptide and its "family members", starting from basic research, to medical applications. In clinical trials conducted at the company "Alon Therapeutics", which she founded and where she serves as the chief scientist, it was discovered that an experimental drug, based on the new peptide, improves the memory and learning functions of people with mild cognitive impairment - which usually predicts the onset of Alzheimer's disease .

For her scientific work, Professor Gozes has won many awards, and she is a central and active participant in national and international scientific organizations, among them: head of the Adams Center for Brain Research, which centers the brain researchers of Tel Aviv University, and chairwoman of the American Neuropeptides Conference . Prof. Gozes was recently elected president of the Israeli Association for Brain Research, and will hold the position starting this December.

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