Hebrew U. and Weizmann: Rappaport Prize for Excellence in Biomedical Research, March 15th 2015
The 2015 Rappaport Prize for Excellence in Biomedical Research will be awarded by the Rappaport Family Trust to Prof. Hermona Soreq of the Hebrew University and to Dr. Eran Elinav of the Weizmann Institute of Science. The prizes will be given at the award ceremony which will take place at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art on March 15, 2015. The Rappaport Prize for Excellence in Biomedical Research was established to promote visionary, groundbreaking and innovative research with therapeutic ramifications that can significantly promote human health.
The Rappaport Family Trust serves as the primary philanthropic vehicle for the vision of Ruth and her late husband, Bruce Rappaport. For over 30 years, the Rappaport Family has donated tens of millions of dollars to the Faculty of Medicine named in their honor at the Technion in Haifa. In addition, the Trust provides funding to the Rappaport Institute for Biomedical Research in Haifa, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and numerous other health and cultural institutions.
“It is important to the family and to the Rappaport Trust, to honor researchers that made groundbreaking breakthroughs that lead to the cure of many maladies”, says Ruth Rappaport. “As successors of my husband Bruce Rappaport, we see in medical research the ability to connect dreams and reality, to make current problems solvable thus improving the lives of millions”.
Neurotransmitter modulation in the service of our health
Prof. Hermona Soreq’s highly interdisciplinary research approach has greatly advanced our understanding of acetylcholine’s role in both health and disease in the brain and in other organs such as the heart. Prof. Soreq has elucidated acetylcholine’s involvement in the brain’s response to stress, and the function that individual genetic variations play in regulating cholinergic signaling, resulting in different sensitivity to stress among people.
Prof. Soreq is a highly collaborative scientist who works very effectively with both young scientists and clinicians. Over her 35+ year research career, Prof. Soreq has been able to combine the fields of genomics, population genetics, molecular biology, biomedicine and basic neuroscience to contribute fundamental insights to the field of neurobiology, translating them from the bench to the clinic.
The microbe-body crosstalk and its importance in human health
The focal point of Dr. Eran Elinav’s research is the microbes that populate the human gut, the gut microbiota, and their interplay with the human host. This complex microbial ecosystem resides within our body from birth until death and has been recently highlighted to have fundamental importance in many aspects of our physiology and in human susceptibility to common multi-factorial disorders.
Dr. Elinav has also shown that the gut microbiome features a circadian rhythmicity in composition and function. Humans with altered circadian rhythms such as shift workers lose this microbial rhythmicity and normal gut microbiome composition, resulting in a susceptibility to obesity and glucose intolerance. Another factor discovered by Dr. Elinav to modulate the composition and function of the gut microbiome are artificial sweeteners, consumed by billions of people worldwide for the prevention of obesity and diabetes. Consumption of these artificial sweeteners can in fact promote glucose intolerance in mice and in some subsets of humans.
Rappaport Prize
Rappaport Prize for Excellence in Biomedical Research is awarded in conjunction with the Rappaport Prize for Art and the Rappaport Prize for Women generating change in the Israeli society. The Rappaport Prize for Art is awarded by the Rappaport Family Trust in cooperation with the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Rappaport Prize for Women generating change in the Israeli society is awarded in cooperation with the La’Isha Magazine.
