Great success for the team of students from Tel Aviv University who won a gold medal during the international synthetic biology competition (iGEM) which took place recently in Paris, putting in competition more of 400 teams from all over the world. Members have developed a revolutionary method of personalized treatment for patients suffering from cancers previously considered incurable. The team's participation in the competition remained uncertain until the last moment, with some of the members still serving in the reserves.
The technology developed by the team and presented in the competition includes an innovative method, called Precise RNA Oncotherapy (PROtech)capable of identifying and treating cancer mutations even when they do not change the cell's protein structure, allowing tailor-made and personalized treatments to be designed for cancer patients who are currently incurable.
A major breakthrough in cancer medicine
Indeed, current treatments are based on the identification of cancer cells based on the proteins they modify. Therefore, the new technology represents a major breakthrough with great potential in the field of cancer medicine. The development is based, among other things, on innovative computer models with improved performance compared to previous state-of-the-art studies.
iGEM is a global competition in the field of synthetic biology, where each team designs an innovative idea aimed at solving a problem, and implements it using engineering, biological and computational tools at the way of a startup. The jury is generally made up of researchers and scientists with experience in the field, some of whom have already participated in the competition or guided teams in this context. This year, more than 400 teams from around the world participated in the competition.
Alongside the work on the project, the group focuses on promoting and spreading the field of synthetic biology among high school students in Israel, and has established a specific stream in this field in collaboration with the ORT network with the aim of train hundreds of high school students in the coming year.
A multidisciplinary team
The Tel Aviv University team was led by Prof. Tamir Tuller from the Faculty of Engineering and was professionally trained in the field of entrepreneurship at the Israeli NGO Startup Nation Central and the Center for Entrepreneurship from Tel Aviv University.
It was made up, as every year, of exceptional students from different academic fields (engineering, life sciences, medicine, exact sciences), who work together to carry out research in the field of synthetic biology. This year's team consisted of Shani Elimelech (Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Life Sciences), Gal Schwartz (Faculty of Life Sciences), Daniel Benarroch (Faculty of Engineering), Rotem Gal (Faculty of engineering and Faculty of Life Sciences), Oren Ben Moshe (Faculty of Exact Sciences), Netanel Ehrlich (Faculty of Exact Sciences and Faculty of Life Sciences), Peleg Bazak (Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Life Sciences), Tal Shemesh (Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Life Sciences), Neve Tzvi (Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences), Yoni Klein (Faculty of Sciences of Life), Itai Fabian (Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences) and Marana Abboud (Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences).
“To our great joy, the technology developed by the team is already attracting great interest among pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, and a patent application has even been filed with the help of Ramot, the University's commercialization company of Tel Aviv,” concludes Prof. Tamir Tuller. “In these difficult times, students have brought great pride to Tel Aviv University and the State of Israel. In addition to winning the medal, they also completed a very important academic journey and, as part of the competition, acquired tools that will help them for the rest of their careers at university, in industry or in society . Finally, I would like to thank the Startup Nation Central organization and the Tel Aviv University Entrepreneurship Center for the quality training they provided to students in entrepreneurship.”
Source: The French Friends of Tel Aviv University
