determination

The drugs we take are often 'her and thorn in her'. They fight the causes of the disease, but at the same time they flood the entire body, and also affect completely healthy areas * *The research team of Prof. Itai Benhar in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology is developing targeted nanometer drug carriers, which will carry the drugs only to the places that need them

"Target-oriented drugs are one of the leading and most fascinating fields in modern medicine," says Prof. Benhar. "Today, doctors avoid using many effective drugs - starting with certain types of antibiotics and ending with chemotherapeutic agents - because they are not selective, and are also toxic to healthy body cells. Targeted drugs are designed to target and act only on certain target molecules, and to cure the disease without causing serious or even fatal side effects. In our laboratory, we develop targeted drug carriers with a modular structure, which can carry different types of drugs to a wide variety of target cells, including cancer cells, fungi and disease-causing bacteria."

guided missiles

The basis of Prof. Benhar's drug carriers are bacteriophages - tiny viruses that naturally reside in bacteria. The bacteriophage was chosen for the task because it is a common and accessible nanoparticle, easy to produce in a simple and low-cost biological system, and can be modified chemically and biologically with relative ease. The bacteriophage carries the other components of the biometric structure: the antibodies, whose function is to target specific target cells, attach to the particle through genetic engineering, while the drug molecules bind to it through a chemical and biological connection, and are released in a controlled manner, at the desired time and place. This creates a high concentration of an active drug only on the affected site - something that improves the effectiveness of the treatment, and minimizes negative and even toxic effects in other areas of the body.

Inspiration from the Nobel Prize

The first model for the use of bacteriophages as targeted nanometer drug carriers was presented in 2006 by Dr. Yeftah Yacovi - at the time a doctoral student in the group and now a faculty member of the Department of Plant Molecular Biology in the Faculty of Life Sciences. Dr. Yacovi received the inspiration for the model from a lecture by Prof. Ada Yonat, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, about the reasons for the lack of selectivity of drugs that work on the ribosome.

To test the effectiveness of the method, researchers at Tel Aviv University developed a variety of systems, which included chloramphenicol antibiotics, several types of disease-causing bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes and Escherichia coli) and antibodies suitable for each of these bacteria. They conducted a wide range of experiments, and proved that the technology is indeed suitable for treating a wide range of disease-causing target cells.

In the last two years, the research group has been examining the effectiveness of the method against pathogenic fungi. The research, which is being carried out in collaboration with Prof. Nir Osherov from the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at the Tel Aviv University School of Medicine, focuses on a fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus, which causes severe lung infections in patients with weakened immune systems. "We believe that we will soon be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of targeted nanometer drug carriers in this model as well," Prof. Benhar concludes.

Prof. Itai Benhar from the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology in the Faculty of Life Sciences is a world-renowned scientist in the field of antibody engineering. In the years 2011-2007 he served as the head of the department. His research group deals with the development and refinement of cutting-edge technologies for the isolation of new antibodies, the refinement of existing antibodies and the integration of antibodies in advanced drug delivery systems and biological sensors. Prof. Benhar has published over 80 articles and book chapters, submitted 10 inventions for patent registration, and served as a scientific advisor to several start-up companies in the field of biotechnology in Israel.