World biomedical experts to attend J'lem conference

Israel Academy of Sciences and the Arts jubilee to center on topics ranging from genome-specific cancer treatment to infectious diseases.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
genome specific treatment 311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
genome specific treatment 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Nine of the world’s leading innovators in biomedicine from Israel, the US and Europe are due to meet at the Israel Academy of Sciences and the Arts on Monday and Tuesday for a conference that will mark the academy’s 50th anniversary.
The participants will discuss a variety of new subjects, from the customization of treatments to suit the individual genome of patients suffering from cancer to infectious diseases. The academy will call on Israel to join the world effort to identify the genomes of individual patients and become part of the global effort to improve medical treatments.
Among those participating will be Prof. Ada Yonath, Israel’s most recent Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot. The other participants are Prof. Arthur Beaudet, chairman of the department of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas; Prof. Leroy Hood, president of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle; Prof. Fotis Kafatos, chairman of immunogenomics at the Imperial College London; Prof. Mary-Claire King of the departments of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle; Prof. Eric Lander,
president of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology and professor of systems biology at Harvard Medical School;Prof. Matthias Mann, director of the Max Planck Institute ofBiochemistry in the department of proteomics and signal transduction inMartinsried, Germany; Prof. Rino Rappuoli, global head of vaccinesresearch at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics in Siena, Italy; Prof.Michel Revel of the Weizmann Institute’s department of moleculargenetics and chairman of the Israel National Bioethics Council; Prof.David Scadden, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute anddirector of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at MassachusettsGeneral Hospital; and Prof. Axel Ullrich of the department of molecularbiology at Max Planck.