Israeli Firm Develops 1-Month Acne Treatment

[cerulean]

http://my.aol.com/news/news_story.psp?type=1&cat=0200&id=0208210808327536
Israeli Firm Develops One-Month Acne Treatment
Reuters
Aug 21 2002 8:08AM


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Dealing with acne may be part of the rite of passage for teenagers, but an Israeli startup has developed a treatment that will take weeks and not months for skin to clear up.
CureLight's ClearLight system, which received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval this week, uses a high-intensity light that kills the acne bacteria without damaging the surrounding skin or tissue.

Yoram Hart, president and co-founder of CureLight, said two 15-minute treatments a week for a month should do the trick.

"Acne until now was treated by creams and antibiotics, which in the best case achieved results after four months of treatment and mostly with side-effects," Hart said in an interview with Reuters.

Side-effects with traditional methods could include skin irritation, burning, redness, peeling, skin discoloration, dizziness, and in some treatments, a reduction in the effectiveness of birth control pills. . . .

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The article goes on to say the treatment is harmless and does not involve UV light. I'm curious if Europeans and Arabs will boycott this treatment. In all seriousness, this is an example of Israel's pharmaceutical industry, which is on the leading edge with numerous technologies.

[minusthejihad]

Exactly,

A country the size of Israel, under constant attack, but able to be one of the leading nations in technology, biosciences, and agriculture. Amazing!

[cerulean]

Contact: Jerry Barach
msbarach@mscc.huji.ac.il
972-2-588-2913
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Technique to induce cancer cells to 'commit suicide' developed by Hebrew University scientists


Jerusalem, August 20, 2002 – A new technique for tricking cancer cells into "committing suicide" and thus preventing their spread has been developed by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Their work is described in the September issue of Nature Biotechnology, which was published this week in its Internet version.

The technique involves the engineering of a virus that will induce the cancer cell to behave in a manner similar to that of normal cells that are under attack.

In normal cells which have been attacked by a virus, a protein known as PKR is activated as the result of RNA replication within the affected cell. This protein causes the cell to destroy itself, thus preventing the spread of the virus. Normally, PKR stays dormant, doing nothing unless the cell is provoked by an invading virus.

Graduate student Alexei Shir (who has since earned his Ph.D.), together with his advisor, Alexander Levitzki, who is Wolfson Family Professor of Biochemistry at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences at the Hebrew University, devised a strategy designed to "trick" cancer cells into activating PKR without activating it in normal cells. Shir and Levitzki developed a technique which involves the engineering of a unique virus, from the same family as the HIV virus, which can be "smuggled" into the cancer cells. This virus, in turn, triggers the PKR activation in the cancerous cells – which otherwise would not occur – and induces them to die, much as ordinary cells would when attacked by a virus.

The virus developed by the Hebrew University researchers is directed specifically against an especially virulent brain tumor cancer and is not harmful to normal cells. This represents a significant improvement over current chemotherapy treatments, which kill cancer cells but also have harmful effects on normal cells. In laboratory tests, the induced virus technique resulted in significant halting of the spread of the brain tumor. For his work, Dr. Shir was awarded one of the Kaye Innovation Awards at the Hebrew University earlier this year.

Prof. Levitzki said that other graduate students of his are now adapting this strategy to lymphoma and leukemia. A start-up company, Algen Biopharmaceuticals, has been established by the Yissum Research Development Co. of the Hebrew University, together with Prof. Levitzki and investors, to further develop this technology. Prof. Levitzki cautioned that a great deal of laboratory and clinical work remains to be done before this technique will be able to be implemented in treatment of cancer patients.


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The abstract is available freely on Nature at http://www.nature.com, but you do have to register (and then do a search).

[I am David]

A country the size of Israel, under constant attack, but able to be one of the leading nations in technology, biosciences, and agriculture. Amazing!

Just what I was thinking, and it outdoes much more fortunate (in terms of circumstances) Western nations like USA and Britian in many instances.