The grant money will upgrade the research institute and help promote research on environmental issues, health and their effect on aging
The Migel Research Institute in Kiryat Shmona received a grant of 4.4 million euros from the European Union to establish the CEREHA Center (Center of Excellence for Research on Environment, Health and Aging) to promote research on environmental issues, health and their impact on aging. The grant was given as part of the Israeli Directorate for the Framework Program The seventh R&D of the European Union (ISERD) as part of the REGPOT project to promote the potential inherent in development areas in Europe (and the Galilee in Israel).
The grant money, which is considered to be the largest given so far in Israel to a research institute as a single project, will be directed to the development and upgrading of the research infrastructure of the Migel Research Institute through the absorption of 15 new researchers who will return from abroad, the purchase of research equipment, further training for researchers in laboratories abroad and the hosting of international conferences. All of these will enable the upgrading of the research laboratories and the exchange of knowledge and information with research bodies from Europe and will advance the research of MIGL researchers in applied directions towards the establishment of additional "start-ups" that will be based in the Galilee and allow for additional jobs and regional development.
CEREHA will be a research center at an international level, with the ability to initiate and carry out interdisciplinary research at a level of excellence in the fields of environment and health and their impact on the elderly. Its purpose will be to investigate the aging phenomena from biological, medical, environmental, social and epidemiological perspectives. All this while gathering the existing knowledge in these fields under a unifying umbrella that will bridge the fragmentation in science and the concentration of research efforts, especially in the human resource, across the entire Mediterranean region. Among other things, the center will deal with the following topics: environmental and health risk factors, nutrition, degenerative diseases of the brain related to old age, infections and diseases acquired in hospitals and nursing homes. Reduction of risk factors, consequences of socio-economic disparities on health among the elderly population.
In the research activity of the center, which will be managed by Miguel, six leading research institutions in the world will participate in these fields: in Denmark - the University of Copenhagen, (Lene Juel Rasmussen), in Italy - Novartis Vaccines, in Norway - the University of Oslo, in the USA - Wayne State University and the medical centers in Detroit, and in the Netherlands - Alterra Wageningen UR.
Prof. Uri Mar Haim, the project manager at MiGal, said that "receiving the grant is recognition by the European Union of the scientific and applied potential inherent in MiGal and the Galilee and it will allow creating the appropriate conditions to attract the best talents to MiGal." Prof. Eliora Ron, the scientific director of Miguel, added and noted that "the development of medicine in the last century, which led to a significant increase in life expectancy in the world, also led to the emergence of new health and social problems related to the elderly. Finding the solutions to these problems is one of the challenges for the scientific industry and of course for the health system. The grant will help expand the knowledge base and international collaborations on the issues of aging and turn MiGal into an international hub that will concentrate knowledge on these issues."
