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Israeli scientists cure cancer in mice with new garlic technique. A chemical contained in garlic, which already holds a prime spot in medical folklore, may have found a serious application after a team of Israeli scientists successfully used it to kill cancer cells in mice. Allicin, the chemical which occurs naturally in garlic and gives it the distinctive smell reputed to ward off vampires, was used by researchers from the internationally-renowned Weizmann institute to destroy malignant tumours in mice. The institute, based near Tel Aviv, said on Monday in a statement that its scientists overcame the hurdle of Allicin's indiscriminating toxicity by "designing an ingenious delivery method that works with the pinpoint accuracy of a smart bomb". The method discovered by the Weizmann scientists also found a way of solving the highly unstable nature of the chemical by repeating the generation process on the site of the tumour only, whilst leaving the healthy cells intact. The Weizmann team of researchers recently established that garlic was useful in combating heart attacks by preventing coronary arteries from clogging up, and that it could also prevent blood pressure, diabetes and even weight gain. Israel and India sign space agreement. The Israeli and Indian space agencies have signed a landmark cooperation agreement in another sign of the strengthening ties between the two countries. Israel sends Amos-2 into space. Only seven other nations are capable of developing and producing communication satellites. Israeli strategy could halt diseases and computer viruses. A new immunization strategy could help to prevent disease epidemics without blanket vaccination, suppress computer viruses, and even break up terrorist networks. All you need do is choose people at random and treat some of their friends, suggest Reuven Cohen, of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat-Gan, Israel, and his colleagues. When a disease is caught by person-to-person contact, it spreads through a social network that looks like a disorderly grid. Each person represents a node in the grid, linked to others with whom they have had potentially infectious contact. In recent years, researchers have realized that disease spread can depend strongly on what this network looks like - on how the nodes are linked. Many human networks seem to take on a form called scale-free. Here a few very highly connected nodes, dubbed 'hubs', bind the network together. Hubs are shortcuts between any two nodes, giving rise to the small-world effect popularized in the notion of us all being a maximum of six degrees of separation from anyone else. In such networks, infection does not travel as traditional epidemiological models imply. Even slow-spreading diseases can reach epidemic proportions. Epidemics were long thought to occur only if the dissemination rate exceeds a certain threshold value. In principle, epidemics in a scale-free network can be quashed by identifying and immunizing just the hubs. This is an appealing method, as it cuts costs. Israeli Researchers teach stem cells to form blood vessels. Technion researchers are the first in the world to have succeeded in inducing embryonic stem cells to differentiate into the cells that make up blood vessels and then to form the vessels themselves. The work will make possible the culture of blood vessels to repair the heart and other organs, as well as provide a way to study blood vessel formation, the Haifa researchers said. Such studies could, among other applications, also be used in to develop new ways to fight cancer. Israeli Anti-Missile test successfully. An Arrow missile test was conducted successfully Tuesday morning, IAI industry sources said. This is the eleventh Arrow Interceptor test and the sixth test of the complete weapon system. The Arrow program was launched by the Israel Aircraft Industries to intercept and destroy Scud missiles, similar to the ones Iraq fired during the Gulf War of 1991. The target was air launched toward the Israeli shore. At 7:15 A.M. an Arrow missile was fired at the target, intercepting it successfully and destroying the missile. The test objectives were to demonstrate the system's improved performance including a higher altitude interception of an incoming target. Italy seeks Israeli water technologies. “Italy needs advanced agricultural research technology, in which Israel is the leader,” Italian Minister of Agricultural Resources Giovanni Alemanno said today at a seminar on agri-tech. He further stated that Italy was also facing water problems, and was therefore interested in Israel’s technology for exploiting, desalinizing, and conserving water. Iraqi Infant Saved By Israeli Surgeons. Israeli surgeons saved the life of one-week-old Iraqi girl, Bayaan Jassam, yesterday. The girl was born with a congenital heart defect that could not be treated in Iraq. European hospitals refused to accept the girl for treatment. Bayaan's father, Abdullah Jassam, told the UK newspaper, the Independent: "People say Israel is bad, but we've been treated very well here. We thank the doctors." Israeli Company Developing Alzheimer’s Vaccine. An Israeli company has received a patent for the first vaccine against Alzheimer`s disease. CEO of Mindset Bio-Pharmaceuticals, Daniel Chain, announced his company’s progress at the Society of Neuroscience Meeting in New Orleans. Israeli Researchers Stop Cystic Fibrosis. Israeli researchers have managed to repair a form of the mutant gene that causes the inherited lung disease cystic fibrosis (CF) with antibiotic nasal drops commonly used for eye infections. Their findings, which have aroused much scientific interest since published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, could be applied to other genetic disorders, including muscular dystrophy, Hurler's syndrome, and various types of hemophilia and cancer, say Dr. Michael Wilschanski and Prof. Eitan Kerem, who headed the team. Experts in the field have called their accomplishment a 'major breakthrough' in the treatment of CF. |
Facts about the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population. |