Aiming at a Kidney Factory, Dr. Benjamin Dekel of Sheba wins the Israel Cancer Research Fund's Clinical Research Career Development Award
by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, THE JERUSALEM POST, October 5, 2008
A Sheba Medical Center physician/researcher who has focused on eliminating cancerous stem cells from pediatric kidney cancers has won the $135,000 Israel Cancer Research Fund's Clinical Research Career Development Award.
Dr. Benjamin Dekel will get the funding over three years and formally receive the award at a Knesset ceremony at the end of October. He is regarded as a world leader in adult and embryonic kidney stem cell manipulation, with which he seeks to cure renal disease and not have to depend on donor kidneys for transplant; more than 100 Israelis are waiting for a kidney donor.
Stem cells are what all cells from all organs and tissues were in the very beginning of their lives. They can renew themselves, as during cell division, and create identical copies of themselves - primitive, undifferentiated stem cells just like the ones they arose from.
"We are thrilled that Dr. Dekel's world-leading research in cancerous stem cells and in pediatric nephrology is being recognized in this way. Six years ago, Sheba identified him is one the brightest young clinicians and research scientists in Israel, and we selected him for the first class of our Talpiot medical leadership advancement program," says Sheba director-general Prof. Zeev Rotstein. "Clearly, the investment has paid off."
Dekel is a senior physician in the pediatric department and the pediatric nephrology unit, and founder of the pediatric stem cell research institute at Sheba's Safra Children's Hospital. While completing his doctoral studies at the Weizmann Institute, he was one of the first in the world to succeed in isolating adult kidney stem cells.
His studies on the growth and differentiation, immunogenicity and function of embryonic organ kidney precursors following transplantation (published in Nature Medicine in 2003), paved the way for the "growing kidneys" concept, where functional miniature human and pig kidneys were developed, and these could lead to replacement therapy for patients with end-stage kidney disease.
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