Technion president: "The essential combination between basic science, clinic and engineering will lead to significant breakthroughs in cancer research"
"The establishment of the integrated cancer research center at the Technion is important news for the residents of the north. The new center will improve the level of medicine in the north and make it possible to provide residents with better care." This is what Nobel Laureate Professor-Researcher Aharon Chachanover said at the inauguration ceremony of the Integrated Center for Cancer Research at the Technion (TICC), which took place on Sunday at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. The ceremony was attended by senior officials of the Technion, Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav, director of Rambam Medical College Prof. Raphael Biar, director of the Emek Medical Center Prof. Orna Blundheim and senior representatives from Klalit Health Fund.
"I salute you for establishing the center," said Mayor Yona Yahav. "This is a historic moment that inspires enormous hope, and the fact that you invited me to participate in this event is a great privilege for me. We see the continuous increase in the number of cancer patients, so it is difficult to talk about a victory over cancer, but the opening of the new center within the Technion inspires enormous hope. Bruce Rappaport, who donated the money to establish the Faculty of Medicine at the Technion, said at the time that 'this is where the Nobel Prizes came from,' and I would like to say following him that the new center will yield innovations in the field of cancer."
"Many universities have cancer centers, but only a few institutions have the essential combination between basic science, clinic and engineering," said Technion President Prof. Peretz Lavi. "That is why it is important for me to emphasize the word 'integrated' in the name of the integrated cancer research center at the Technion. I have no doubt that only the aforementioned combination can lead to significant breakthroughs."
The Integrated Center for Cancer Research at the Technion is the first body of its kind in Israel. He will combine the extensive knowledge and extensive experience gained in the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion, in the five medical centers affiliated with it (the Rambam Medical Center, the Bnei Zion Medical Center, the Carmel Medical Center, the Emek Medical Center in Afula, and the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera) and scientific faculties and various engineering studies at the Technion. In the three years that have passed since the decision to establish the center, the Technion worked to recruit the world's leading experts in cancer research, both on the basic science side and on the applied side.
The new center will be headed by Prof. Zeev Ronai, who returned to Israel after a rich and impressive career in the USA, and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry Prof.-Researcher Aharon Chachanover. Prof. Zeev Ronai is a world-renowned expert in communication networks involved in the development of cancerous tumors, in the study of the heterogeneity of the tumor and its resistance to treatments and the ability of cancer cells to survive and thrive in difficult conditions. "The establishment of a first-of-its-kind center in Israel, together with Prof. Chechanover, is the fulfillment of a long-standing dream," said Prof. Ronai. "This is a center that can only be established here at the Technion, thanks to the variety of engineering faculties that will work with us and allow us to translate basic research into new tools for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Prof. Eyal Gottlieb, a world expert in the field of metabolomics, will head the Cancer Metabolomics Institute which will operate within the Integrated Center for Cancer Research at the Technion (TICC). Together we will all work with the goal of understanding the pathways of the formation of the cancer cell, deciphering the mechanisms that give it resistance to anti-cancer drugs and promote the development of new tools for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up."
"For me, the establishment of the center is the closing of a circle," said research professor Chechanover. "I was born in Haifa and after studying medicine in Jerusalem I returned to the Technion to complete my studies in life sciences. Here, together with the supervisor of my doctoral thesis Prof. Avraham Hershko, we discovered the ubiquitin system that controls the breakdown of proteins in the cell. The discovery of this system, which led to the development of revolutionary drugs to treat cancer, occurred at a time when the life sciences and medicine on the one hand, and engineering on the other, were seen as separate disciplines, and the Technion prided itself on being a leading engineering university. Today no one disputes that medicine, basic science and engineering are one discipline. After all, nature does not separate physics, chemistry, biology and medicine - they are all found on one continuum and the Technion is a rare hostel for all of them."
Regarding the fight against cancer, Prof. Chachanover said that "the sequencing of the human genome, which is currently done very quickly and at a low price, will lead to the discovery of new mutations and will allow very early diagnosis of tumors. It is true that the mortality curve has not yet started to decrease, but it will decrease, soon I hope, and significantly. In the best case we will defeat cancer, and in the worst case we will turn it from a terminal disease into a chronic disease."
Dr. Miki Sharaf, head of the hospital division of the General Health Services, said that the fund will cooperate with the center as part of its commitment to improving the medical service in the periphery. "Gone are the days when one doctor answered all the problems. The complex patient conditions, including malignant diseases, require collaboration between clinic, research and technology. This cooperation, which will be achieved by the connection between the leading research institution in Israel and the largest fund in the country, is a force multiplier in everything related to the quality of care and the level of service."
The director of the Rambam Medical College, Prof. Raphael Biar, said that "unlike cardiovascular medicine, where there was a sharp drop in mortality rates, no such improvement was recorded in cancer despite the enormous medical and technological progress. In order to defeat cancer, a deep understanding of the disease is required in many aspects - at the molecular and genetic level, in the aspect of transferring drugs to the tumor and analyzing huge amounts of information. In addition, there is an economic challenge here because the prices of cancer drugs are skyrocketing, and if this trend does not change we will have excellent drugs that will not be within the reach of the patients. Therefore, there is enormous potential here, and there is no doubt that the establishment of the new center right here at the Technion will lead to enormous progress."
"Significant research is no longer done by a single scientist," said the Dean of the Rapaport Faculty of Medicine, Prof. Eliezer Shalu, "and the new center is built on the principle of cooperation and breaking down barriers between disciplines. Here, in a modern and advanced environment, brilliant researchers, many of them young, will work to better understand the biological mechanisms of cancer and develop new methods for diagnosing and treating the disease."
The scientific lectures at the event were given by Prof. Douglas Hanhan from the Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, who spoke about the mechanisms common to various cancerous tumors and the potential in developing drugs for those mechanisms; And Sol Singer, author of the bestseller "The Startup Nation", who spoke about dramatic changes that will occur in the next decade with the rise of the era of early diagnosis, "an era in which we will all be walking around with wearable sensors that will monitor our condition, detect physiological disorders at an early stage, and thus make it possible to prevent the development of diseases Or discover them at a very early stage, when they are curable."
