July 2011: Researchers at the Weizmann Institute may have found a way to make cancer therapy better, and yet also less expensive. One of the latest attempts to boost the body’s defences against cancer is called adoptive cell transfer, in which patients receive a therapeutic injection of their own immune cells. This therapy, currently tested in early clinical trials for melanoma and neuroblastoma, has its limitations: Removing immune cells from a patient and growing them outside the body for future re-injection is extremely expensive and not always technically feasible.

Weizmann Institute scientists have now tested in mice a new form of adoptive cell transfer which overcomes these limitations while enhancing the tumour-fighting ability of the transferred cells. The research, reported recently in the professional journal Blood, was performed in the lab of Prof. Zelig Eshhar of the Institute’s Immunology Department by graduate student Assaf Marcus and lab technician Tova Waks.

The new approach should be more readily applicable than existing adoptive cell transfer treatments, because it relies on a donor pool of immune T cells that can be prepared in advance, rather than on the patient’s own cells. Using a method pioneered by Prof. Eshhar more than two decades ago, these T cells are outfitted with receptors that specifically seek out and identify the tumour, thereby promoting its destruction.

In the study, the scientists first suppressed the immune system of mice with a relatively mild dose of radiation. They then administered a controlled dose of the modified donor T cells. The mild suppression temporarily prevented the donor T cells from being rejected by the recipient, but it didn’t prevent the cells themselves from attacking the recipient’s body, particularly the tumour.

This approach was precisely what rendered the therapy so effective: The delay in the rejection of the donor T cells gave these cells sufficient opportunity to destroy the tumour. If this method works in humans as well as it did in mice, it could lead to an affordable cell transfer therapy for a wide variety of cancers.

July 2011: Archaeologists have discovered a rare gold bell with a small loop at its end. The finding was made during an archaeological excavation in the City of David National Park (near the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem) by the Israel Antiquities Authority in cooperation with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Ir David Foundation.

The directors of the excavation on behalf of the Antiquities Authority, archaeologists Eli Shukron and Professor Ronny Reich of Haifa University, stated, “The bell looked as if it was sewn on the garment worn by a man of high authority in Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period.

“The bell was exposed in the city’s main drainage channel of that period, between the layers of dirt that had been piled on the floor of the channel,” they continued. “This drainage channel was built and hewn west to the Western Wall of the Temple Mount and drained the rainfall in the different parts of the city, through the City of David and the Shiloah Pool to the Kidron valley.”

The excavation area, above the drain, is located in the main street of Jerusalem which rose from the Shiloah Pool in the City of David. In this street an interchange was built through which people entered the Temple Mount. The remains of this interchange are what is known today as Robinson’s Arch. Archaeologists believe that the eminent man walked the streets of Jerusalem in the area of Robinson’s Arch and lost the golden bell which fell off his outfit into the drain beneath the street.

Jewish sources state that the high priests who served in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem used to hang golden bells on the edges of their coats. The book of Exodus, for example, contains a description of the coat of Aaron the high priest in which it is said that coat contains, “bells of gold.” While it is unknown if the bell belonged to one of the high priests, archaeologists have not ruled out the possibility.

Following is a link to the site, including the Prime Minister’s invitation to send questions, with Arabic subtitles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrtHihxywTE