Prof. Weinstock Rosin, now 79 years old, continues to research using sophisticated methods to discover drugs that act on mechanisms of brain function and memory in these diseases.
Minister of Education Shay Piron, on Thursday, announced the winning of the Israel Prize in the field of medical research to Prof. Marta Weinstock Rosin and congratulated her. The Minister of Education approved the recommendation of the award committee headed by Prof. Michel Rebel.
In the committee's reasoning, its members noted that Prof. Marta Weinstock Rosin from the School of Pharmacy in the Faculty of Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has been researching drug treatments for degenerative diseases of the central nervous system for years.
The drug rivastigmine (Exlon) improves the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of people who suffer from Alzheimer's disease.
Prof. Weinstock Rosin continues to research using sophisticated methods to discover drugs that act on mechanisms of brain function and memory in these diseases.
Prof. Michel Rebel served as the chairman of the award committee, and beside him the members of the committee - Prof. Efrat Levy - Lahad, Prof. Haim Sider and Prof. Karl Skortsky.
Prof. Martha Weinstock-Rozin - was born in Vienna in 1935, and in 1939, near the outbreak of World War II, her family had to flee and arrived in England. At the end of the war, she started learning to play the violin, and participated in the school orchestra and a well-known amateur orchestra ("Ben Uri") until she immigrated to Israel. Despite the hardships of the war years while living in London, she succeeded in her studies at school, and from a young age decided to engage in medicinal research. Therefore, although she was accepted to study medicine at the University of London (something that was difficult for a woman in those days) she came to the conclusion that her ambitions would only be fulfilled if she studied at the School of Pharmacy at the University of London for the B.Pharm degree. (1956). There she acquired a broad knowledge of chemistry and pharmacology, along with a solid foundation in physiology, biochemistry and pathology. In her undergraduate studies, she was given basic training in pharmaceutical chemistry by Prof. Arnold Beckett, and in pharmacology by Prof. Mary Lockett, and then continued with her for an M.Sc. in Pharmacology (1958). Thanks to these teachers, she learned the basics of drug design and appropriate methods for their evaluation. She continued her studies at St. Mary's for a Ph.D. in pharmacology (1961), in a pioneering work in which she demonstrated the existence of morphine receptors in the body. This finding led to the discovery of endogenous opiates by other researchers.
At the age of 28, she was appointed a lecturer in pharmacology there, and her research was supported by a grant from the British Medical Research Council. Continuing her work at the hospital, she studied a course in immunology given by world-renowned lecturers in the field. Following her studies in immunology, she joined the allergy clinic at the hospital, where she researched and discovered how a pollen allergy vaccine works and published several articles in the field.
Although she was offered a senior position at the University of London in 1969, she preferred to immigrate to Israel with her husband and 3 children, and at the end of her first year in Israel, her fourth child was born. Her husband was invited to manage the new rehabilitation and nursing hospital in Gedera, and Marta was asked by the late dean Prof. Shimon Gitar to join the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. There she was given the organization to teach pharmacology at the new school. Following her research, she initiated a project to prepare beta-adrenergic receptor antagonists that would act selectively in the heart, with the aim of minimizing their negative side effects.
In 1977-1976 she went on sabbatical at the NIH in the USA as a senior researcher. There she worked with Prof. Axelrod Julius and Prof. Irwin Kopin, and during her year of work there she published 8 articles about her research in prestigious journals.
In 1977, Martha received a grant from the US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to study the mechanism of tolerance to opiates and how they cause respiratory depression. Shortly after, she answered the invitation of Prof. Felix Bergman, director of the pharmacology department at the Hebrew University School of Medicine, to fill a vacancy in his department due to his retirement. A year after she arrived, the department merged with the pharmacology department in a pharmacy school. She managed the teaching for pharmacy students and also studied pharmacology for medical and dental students. There she continued her research on the mechanism related to the activities of morphine, and showed that it is possible to cancel the respiratory depressant effect of morphine through the simultaneous administration of morphine and physostigmine, which is an inhibitor of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, which breaks down acetylcholine. This combination even caused the strengthening of the pain relief effect of morphine.
In 1981 she was awarded the title of full professor.
In the 80s, her beloved mother-in-law became ill with Alzheimer's disease, and Marta felt helpless in the face of the lack of medical treatment for this terrible disease. Thanks to her research with cholinesterase enzyme inhibitors, the possibility of alleviating the cognitive disorders through treatment with these substances occurred to her. She managed to convince the director general of the Ministry of Science to allow her to use the luxury of the research funds she received from the Ministry for this purpose. In 1986, one of the cholinesterase inhibitors she prepared together with Prof. Michael Horev and the late Dr. Ze'ev Ta-Shema, discovered suitable activity for this purpose. The drug was sold by the "Yishom" company from the Hebrew University to the Swiss company Sandoz, and is marketed today by the Novartis company as Exelon. Marta was sworn to secrecy by the Sandoz company regarding the origin of the drug in Israel - something that prevented her from receiving a K award from the Hebrew University until 2000. On the other hand, the preservation of secrecy in retrospect prevented people from contacting her with a request to receive the drug before the successful completion of its development required before it goes on the market.
In 1983, Martha was elected director of the Department of Pharmacology at the Hebrew University. Since 1977 she sat on the editorial board of scientific journals, European Journal of Pharmacology, British Journal of Pharmacology, Journal of Neural Transmission.
Marta was very interested in the neural control of blood pressure and the mechanism of its increase by excess salt. She developed two strains of rabbits with low and high sensitivity, respectively, of the return to pressure (baroreflex). She showed that only rabbits with low sensitivity developed hypertension on a high salt diet. In 1987, Martha was invited by Professor Koerner of the Baker Institute in Melbourne, Australia, to bring the rabbits for a joint study on baroreflex control of blood pressure.
In 1994, Professor Rosin received another grant from the Ministry of Science. In collaboration with Teva and Professor Mousa Yodi from the Technion, a number of new compounds were prepared, one of which was intended for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. However, during her research, along with the accumulated knowledge about Alzheimer's disease, Marta realized that this compound has no advantage over existing cholinesterase inhibitors such as Exelon, as demonstrated in a clinical trial in Europe that ended about a year ago. Even before this experiment, she had already begun to turn her thoughts in the direction of preventing diseases instead of treating them. She showed that ladostigil, administered at a much lower dose than that which inhibits the enzyme cholinesterase, caused aging rats to restore the activity of glial cells and nerve cells damaged as a result of aging to the level of activity present in young rats, and also prevented the decline in memory. This discovery was registered in a patent in 2005. In 2010, the "Yishom" company granted a license to "Abraham Pharma", a company established in Israel to further the development of the drug ladostigil after the "Teva" company returned it to the Hebrew University. The company is now engaged in a clinical trial with ladostigil in 200 subjects who are in the stage of mild cognitive impairment to test whether it is possible to prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease. This experiment is in 14 centers in Israel, Austria and Germany. from Oregon and is carried out by Marta together with Dr. Yona Geffen, CEO of "Abraham Pharma", and is partially funded by the rewards from Exelon.
In recent years, Marta has returned to work in the field of immunology, and together with Prof. Avraham Nodelman from Bar-Ilan University and Prof. Avraham Rubinstein from the Hebrew University are developing substances to treat chronic inflammatory diseases such as inflammation of the colon and joints.
During her professional life, she sat on almost all the important committees of the university, including the board of directors. She mentored 59 students for M.Sc., Ph.D., MD, Post doc degrees, and many of her trainees reached leading positions in academia and the pharmaceutical industry.
Since her retirement in 2003, Prof. Weinstock-Rozin continues to collaborate with scientists in many fields and publish articles and chapters in scientific books, and is even frequently invited to lecture at scientific conferences.
Prof. Marta Weinstock-Rosin is married to Prof. Arnold Rosin, beloved of Jerusalem (since 4) director of the geriatric department at the former Shaarei Zedek Medical Center. They have 20 children and XNUMX grandchildren.
One response
You urgently need a proofreader as well as a linguistic editor! The article about Prof. Rosin proves it!