The Chief Scientist at the TMT Ministry, Dr. Eli Ofer: "Every association operating in the field of biotechnology in general, and biopharma in particular, produces in Israel a technological infrastructure that contributes to the strengthening of this industrial sector, which is very important to the country's economy."
The Magnet Committee headed by the Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Health, Dr. Eli Ofer, approved the establishment of a new association called "Pomegranates", which will deal with a new therapeutic approach based on the silencing of gene expression with the help of RNA molecules.
The control of gene expression in cells at the level of RNA molecules was first identified in 1998, and the high innovation was recognized when Andrew Fire (Fire) and Craig Mello ((Mello), the researchers who identified this mechanism, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006. This control process is considered to have the potential to serve as the basis for a new therapeutic approach, and leading pharmaceutical companies are developing drugs based on inhibitory RNA molecules (siRNA - small interference RNA).
Despite the great promise and enormous medical potential, especially in the field of cancer treatment, the drug development process encounters great difficulties, such as the instability of the molecules in physiological systems and difficulty in transporting the molecules and introducing them to the cellular target site.
The members of the "Pomegranates" association, the new association established in the magnet program of the Chief Scientist's Office, are industry and academic people who will try to face the challenge, and find innovative solutions to the barriers that prevent widespread medical application of this molecular mechanism. In addition to this, as part of the activity in Maged, they will provide control and monitoring tools that will help in the development of the drugs.
Participating companies are QBI, which develops RNA-based drugs and is well aware of the needs; Rosetta Genomics; Biolab; ASI; Harlan and Compugen as well as researchers from the Hebrew University, the Technion, Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University.
Dr. Eli Ofer, the chief scientist, noted that "every association operating in the field of biotechnology in general, and biopharma in particular, produces a technological infrastructure in Israel that contributes to the strengthening of this industrial sector, which is very important to the country's economy."
Ilan Peled, Director of Magnet, added that "within the framework of Magnet, it is not possible to develop drugs, but it is possible to work to develop tools and methods that will enable the development of a drug in a more efficient way, or to deal with generic technological challenges, which are an obstacle in the general application of RNA molecules as drugs ".
