An ongoing collaboration is basic research to understand skin cancer metastases that reach the brain between Prof. Weitz's lab and a parallel lab in Austria
In a ceremony held at Tel Aviv University last week, a collaboration agreement was signed between the Cancer Biology Research Center at Tel Aviv University and the Cancer Research Center of the Medical University of Vienna (Comprehensive Cancer Center - CCC).
The agreement was signed by the Rector of Tel Aviv University, Prof. Aharon Shay, and the founder of the Cancer Research Center, Prof. Yitzhak Weitz, while on the Austrian side, the director of the Cancer Research Center, Prof. Christoph Tselinsky, signed the agreement. As part of the cooperation, the two institutions will encourage joint projects, researcher exchanges, student exchanges, and more.
The Cancer Biology Research Center was established in 1980 with the aim of uniting the forces of cancer researchers in the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Life Sciences. Prof. Weitz explains that the idea was to bring together the medical researchers who also encounter patients in their work at the hospitals affiliated with the university (such as oncologists, radiological surgeons, etc.) and link them in joint research with researchers engaged in basic research in cancer research at the cellular and molecular level such as immunologists, geneticists and biochemists. "This center is unique in the country, especially thanks to the huge array of oncology departments in the large hospitals in the center." The center is currently headed by Prof. Nadir Arber from Souraski Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University.
The Cancer Research Center in Vienna is much younger, it was established two years ago as a collaboration between the City of Vienna, which owns the largest hospital in the city, and the Medical University of Vienna, which split a few years ago from the University of Vienna, as a continuation of the trend in German-speaking countries of turning medical schools into independent universities . Unlike the Tel Aviv center, the Vienna center also treats patients itself, like the major cancer centers in the USA.
Collaborative study of skin cancer
The relationship between researchers from Tel Aviv University and Austrian researchers in the field of cancer was founded more than a decade ago in a joint conference held in Israel and two joint conferences held in Vienna. It is now moving forward, when researchers will be able to submit joint applications to EU research funds. One of the examples of such collaboration is found in Weitz's laboratory, where Professor Michael Gross from the University of Vienna will come, on a scholarship from the International Cancer Society, and will participate in research in the field of skin cancer conducted in Prof. Weitz's laboratory
"We focus on metastases of skin cancer that go to the brain and characterize this type of cancer, when about 40% of melanoma patients suffer from brain metastases. Many basic aspects of this disease are still unknown, for example how the melanoma cells reach the brain, and why specifically the brain and not anywhere else, why some of these cells are dormant and when they wake up and become a tumor, as well as how to prevent the development of the tumor. In this area, our work was accepted for printing a few days ago. In this study, which was carried out by doctoral student Sivan Yazraeli, we also saw that other melanoma cells also reach the liver, and we found differences between the cells that settle in the liver and those that settle in the brain. And all these basic questions in only one disease - skin cancer.
The samples of the tumors studied in this study were received by the Israeli researchers from their colleagues in Vienna (Prof. Michael Miksha and Prof. Walter Berger). From each tumor, the researchers developed two types of metastases that reach the brain - one that causes a brain tumor and the other of dormant cells. Now the circle will be closed when the researchers in Vienna will use the methods developed in Israel and test them on a greater variety of tumors, as well as perform genetic tests on the cells.
For more details: Prof. Yitzhak Weitz email addresses:
