Technion and top US universities unveil implantable ‘living pancreas’ that senses glucose, produces insulin and evades immune response, paving the way for self-regulating, long-term diabetes treatment without daily injections
A multinational research team led by an Israeli engineer and involving top U.S. universities has unveiled a pioneering implantable device that could someday eliminate the need for daily insulin injections for people with diabetes.
The study, published Jan. 28 in Science Translational Medicine, describes a living, cell‑based implant that functions as an autonomous “artificial pancreas.” Once placed in the body, the device continuously monitors blood glucose levels, produces insulin internally and releases exactly what the body needs — without external pumps, injections or patient intervention.
The breakthrough centers on a novel protective technology researchers call a “crystalline shield”, engineered to prevent the body’s immune system from rejecting the implant — a major hurdle that has stymied cell‑based therapies for decades. The shield allows the implant to operate reliably for years.
Tests in mice showed effective long‑term glucose regulation, and studies in non‑human primates confirmed that the cells inside the implant remain viable and functional, the researchers said. Those results, they added, provide strong support for future clinical testing in humans.
The work was led by Assistant Professor Shady Farah of the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology’s Faculty of Chemical Engineering, in collaboration with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of Massachusetts. The collaboration traces back to Farah’s postdoctoral work beginning in 2018 at MIT and Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School, under tissue‑engineering pioneers including Robert Langer, a co‑founder of Moderna.
Assistant Professor Shady Farah
Farah’s co‑first authors on the paper are Matthew Bochenek of MIT and Joshua Doloff of Johns Hopkins. Other contributors include Technion researchers Dr. Merna Shaheen‑Mualim and former master’s students Neta Kutner and Edward Odeh, who also helped adapt the work for publication.
While the initial focus is on diabetes, the team emphasized that the platform could one day be adapted to deliver other biologic therapies continuously, offering a new approach to chronic conditions such as hemophilia and other metabolic or genetic diseases.
If successfully translated into human treatment, experts say the technology could reshape the management of chronic illness by replacing lifelong drug regimens with self‑regulated, living therapeutics working continuously inside the body.
Prof. Ido Kaminer and Prof. Yehonadav Bekenstein of the Technion have been awarded ERC Proof of Concept (PoC) grants by the European Research Council. The grants are expected to lead to a major leap forward in low-radiation medical imaging and in the precise mapping of biological tissues.
Two young researchers from the Technion have won the prestigious ERC PoC grants from the European Research Council (ERC). Proof of Concept grants are feasibility grants designed to promote the transition from academic research to application and commercialization, including the establishment of a startup company, and are awarded only to researchers who have previously received ERC grants. Grant amount: €150,000 each.
The two recipients are Prof. Ido Kaminer from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Prof. Yehonadav Bekenstein from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering. Both joined the Technion faculty in the same year, 2018, and in 2025 inaugurated a joint interfaculty laboratory: the Quantum Microscopy Lab. This innovative lab is equipped with state-of-the-art microscopes capable of detecting quantum phenomena that cannot be studied by other means. The laboratory, which also includes Dr. Michael Krüger from the Faculty of Physics, was established following the Technion’s success in a call issued by the National Authority for Technological Innovation, with support from the Helen Diller Quantum Center at the Technion.
Prof. Yehonadav Bekenstein, a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, joined the Technion faculty after a Rothschild postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. He is considered a leading scientist in materials discovery, specializing in light-emitting nanomaterials and perovskites the technology at the heart of the new sensor that earned him the grant. His scientific work has been recognized with a series of prestigious awards, including the Krill Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research and the Goldberg Prize from the Technion.
The grant Prof. Bekenstein received will be used to advance MagicLayer a sensor for a new generation of medical imaging with minimal radiation exposure. The scientifc idea of the developed technology is based on nanocrystals and ultrafast quantum light emission.
The Quantum Microscopy Laboratory at the Technion. From left to right: Prof. Yehonadav Bekenstein, Dr. Michael Krüger, Prof. Ido Kaminer, and laboratory director Dr. Kobi Cohen
Sensors used in medical imaging are currently limited by their response speed. This relative slowness leads to the loss of valuable information and forces physicians to increase patients’ exposure to radiation. Standard crystals used in industry have reached the limits of their classical physical capabilities and struggle to deliver the field’s “holy grail,” which is a time resolution of 10 picoseconds. This is where the new sensor comes in; it is based on arrays of nanocrystals developed at the Technion. The light emitted from these arrays is correlated and responds significantly faster than existing technologies. The technology is relevant not only to medicine but also to improving electron microscopes and to real-time monitoring of radioactive gases in nuclear facilities. The research team behind the winning proposal includes Dr. Georgy Dosovitskiy, Dr. Rotem Strassberg, and Shai Levy.
Prof. Ido Kaminer, who completed all of his degrees at the Erna and Andrew Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, returned as a faculty member after a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT. He is a world-renowned scientist in photonics, electron microscopy, light–matter interactions, quantum information processing, and mathematical discoveries using artificial intelligence. His scientific work has earned him numerous honors, including the Stanisław Lem Prize, the Schmidt Science Polymath Award, the Blavatnik Award, the Krill Prize, and election to the Israeli Young Academy.
His new grant will be used to develop Stork – an innovative module that improves the performance of transmission electron microscopes (TEM). These instruments are widely adopted for biological applications as well as semiconductor metrology and inspection. However, their capabilities across both fields are highly limited owing to low contrast, which hinders resolution and throughput. The Stork technology makes it possible to introduce light directly onto the studied specimen, while also efficiently collecting the light emitted from it, thereby enhancing the TEM imaging capabilities dramatically. This paradigm shift in TEM technology will provide unprecedented information for imaging biological tissues and atomic-scale defects in electronic devices. The research team behind the winning proposal includes Dr. Tal Fishman, Dr. Michael Yannai, and Dr. Raphael Dahan, as well as students Marta Rozhenko and Rotem Elimelech.
Researchers at the Technion Faculty of Biology have discovered that a mechanism responsible for breaking down toxic proteins, and known to be involved in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, may actually spread these proteins to neighboring cells, thereby promoting the progression of the disease in the brain
A research group led by Professor Michael Glickman, dean of the Technion’s Faculty of Biology, has uncovered a key mechanism in the development of Alzheimer’s. The mechanism in question identifies toxic proteins and disposes of them. In most cases, harmful proteins are degraded inside the cell. However, the researchers found that in certain situations, the very system meant to eliminate these proteins simply transfers them outside the cell. This discovery may explain how a disease that begins randomly in individual neurons can spread to large regions of the brain.
The study, published in PNAS, was led by Prof. Glickman and postdoctoral researcher Dr. Ajay Wagh. In their article, they describe how brain cells deal with UBB+1, a defective and toxic variant of the protein ubiquitin.
The ubiquitin system is essential for breaking down damaged and dangerous proteins. Ubiquitin helps the body eliminate such proteins. The problem arises when ubiquitin mutates into UBB+1. Instead of protecting the cell, UBB+1 harms it, forming protein aggregates associated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease. In brain cells, this damage is particularly severe because neurons do not divide or regenerate – once a neuron dies, it cannot be replaced. One of the “gatekeepers” that prevents UBB+1 from poisoning brain cells is the protein p62, which is involved in the cellular self-cleaning process known as autophagy. Acting as a smart receptor, p62 recognizes UBB+1 and encloses it in a vesicle that prevents it from causing harm.
Next, one of two things happens: p62 either directs the vesicle to the lysosome, which is the cell’s recycling centre, or secretes it out of the cell into the intercellular brain fluid. The Technion researchers show that the second option may endanger brain tissue. Once the vesicle is expelled into the brain’s extracellular fluid, fragments of the toxic UBB+1 protein may leak into neighboring neurons, thereby accelerating the spread of Alzheimer’s pathology.
According to Prof. Glickman, “We all want someone to take out the trash, but in this case, the cells are dumping their trash on their neighbors. Although this solves an acute problem for the individual cell, it may cause long-term damage to the entire tissue. We believe that uncovering this mechanism will enable, first, early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease based on analyses of cerebrospinal and other body fluids, and second, the development of precise, personalized treatments.”
The study was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the European Research Council (ERC).
Prof. Reinhard Genzel, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, met with students at the Technion and planted a tree on the campus’ “Nobel Laureates Avenue”
Prof. Reinhard Genzel, Nobel Prize laureate for 2020, recently visited the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. During his visit, Prof. Genzel met with the incoming Dean of the Faculty of Physics, Prof. Eric Akkermans, delivered a lecture in the Faculty, met with graduate students, and then planted a tree on the Technion’s “Nobel Laureates Avenue,” where more than twenty trees have been planted by Nobel Prize laureates.
This was not Prof. Genzel’s first visit to the Technion. In 2014, the Technion awarded him the Harvey Prize in Science and Technology for proving the existence of a black hole at the center of our galaxy (i.e., the Milky Way Galaxy). The Harvey Prize is the most prestigious award granted by the Technion, and over the years, it has become known as a “Nobel predictor,” since more than 30% of its recipients have gone on to win the Nobel Prize. This was the case with Prof. Genzel, who received the Nobel Prize six years after winning the Harvey Prize. Since then, Prof. Genzel has visited the Technion several times.
Born in Germany in 1952, Prof. Genzel is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany. Until the age of 15, he believed he would become an archaeologist. “In the end, I arrived at a similar field,” he told Technion students, “after all, both archaeology and astrophysics deal with the study of the past.” He was also interested in sports and was even selected for Germany’s Olympic team in javelin throwing. A severe elbow injury cut short this promising athletic career and dashed his dream of participating in the Munich Olympics. Nevertheless, he said that “Sports gave me excellent tools for life, especially the understanding that you must work hard and know how to get up after failures.”
Prof. Genzel with Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan
Before the lecture in the Faculty of Physics, Prof. Hagai Perets spoke in glowing terms about Prof. Genzel. “In my view, his greatness as a person is no less than his greatness as a scientist,” said Prof. Perets. “As a doctoral student, I remember how accessible he was to students, how much he enjoyed meeting them and helping them. His support for Israel over many decades, and especially since the events of October 7, attests to his exceptional character.”
“My visits here, and my friendships with colleagues at the Technion and in Israel in general, are a great privilege,” said Prof. Genzel. “I see many curious students here in the audience, and I promise them that the Technion is an excellent place for high-level learning.”
“Black holes were part of Einstein’s general theory of relativity,” said Prof. Genzel. “According to Newton’s classical physics, if a photon (a particle of light) passes near a mass, it will not be affected by it and will not change its path. According to Einstein, by contrast, the photon will be influenced by the mass and will deviate from its trajectory; and if the mass is particularly large, the deviation will be especially large. In such a case, regions form in space from which photons cannot escape. These are black holes.”
Prof. Genzel
Since the publication of the general theory of relativity in 1915, significant breakthroughs have been made in its theoretical development, but experimental research has had to contend with numerous technological challenges – and this is where Prof. Genzel’s main contribution lies. Using the technologies he developed, Prof. Genzel succeeded in proving the existence of a black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and determined that its mass is four million times that of the Sun.
One of the technological challenges on the road to discovery was the optical challenge, since the radiation reaching the large telescopes on Earth passes through currents and turbulence in the atmosphere that distort the resulting image. The solution developed by Prof. Genzel and his colleagues combined infrared imaging, innovative optical technologies, and adaptive optics – a field that began developing in the 1980s and made it possible to correct the optical disturbances created by the atmosphere. Adaptive optics is based, among other things, on creating “virtual stars” using laser radiation and observing them telescopically; based on the data obtained from these observations, and the gap between them and the true properties of the “star,” it is possible to create a correction mechanism that neutralizes atmospheric distortions and provides a more accurate and sharper image of real objects in space.
“Prof. Genzel is a leading observational astrophysicist who has excelled in developing groundbreaking instrumentation,” explained Dr. Shmuel Bialy from the Technion Faculty of Physics, who organized the visit. “The success that led him to the Nobel Prize was based on instruments whose development he led. The most recent of these, GRAVITY, was launched in 2016 as part of the VLT (Very Large Telescope) in Chile. The instrument combines the signals from four telescopes, each with a diameter of 8.2 meters, and produces an image with exceptional resolution, equivalent to observations made with a gigantic telescope with a mirror diameter of 130 meters. This technology makes it possible to measure the positions of objects with an accuracy of up to 10 micro-arcseconds – like measuring, in a telescopic observation from Tel Aviv, the exact position of a grain of sand lying on a bench in New York.”
Prof. Genzel with the students
The technological advances led by Prof. Genzel enabled him and his partners to create pioneering observation systems and unprecedented discoveries. In October 2002, they published in Nature the findings they had collected over a decade and their central conclusion: at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, about 26,000 light-years from us, there is an object smaller than the size of the solar system but with a mass four million times that of the Sun. This discovery led to the awarding of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics to three scientists: Prof. Genzel and Prof. Andrea Ghez for the discovery of a “supermassive compact object at the center of the galaxy,” and Prof. Roger Penrose of Oxford for showing that “black holes are a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity.”
Prof. Genzel shared his scientific journey with the students. “The motivation to continue experimental research, with all its challenges, came to me from the many successes along the way. The Nobel Prize was never my motivation – and Prof. Charles Townes, Nobel laureate in Physics for 1964, made it clear to me early in my career that there are no Nobel Prizes in astrophysics. Later, when I received the Crafoord Prize in 2012 from the Royal Swedish Academy – the same academy that awards the Nobel Prize – they told me at the dinner after the ceremony that ‘you have no chance of winning a Nobel Prize – unless you present a truly earth-shaking discovery.’”
In the past decade, things have changed, and four Nobel Prizes in Physics have been awarded to astrophysics. One of them went to Prof. Genzel, who told the students that, “Even after the Prize, I continue to do science because that’s what I love. It’s not that nothing changes – the attention you receive following the award is hard to describe. And it doesn’t affect you only positively – suddenly, the media follows every word you say and looks for ways to create sensational headlines from your remarks. That requires great caution.”
At 15, when a neurological condition took Tobias Weinberg’s ability to speak, aspects of his personality became more difficult to express.
Typing to communicate, he struggled to keep up in conversations, especially to make the jokes or sarcastic comments that had been his norm. And his first text-to-voice device was monotone, with Mexican or Spanish accents but not his native Argentinian.
“The monotone voices, the timing of interjections and conveying my personality through this new way of communication was definitely frustrating,” wrote Weinberg, now a doctoral student and Siegel PiTech Fellow at Cornell Tech. As part of the Matter of Tech Lab, he is exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance the technologies that he and more than two million Americans with speech disabilities use to communicate.
Through a standing partnership between Cornell Tech and YAI—a nonprofit that supports more than 20,000 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in New York, New Jersey and California—Weinberg spent a year working with a group of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) users who live in group homes in Tarrytown, New York to better understand needs and behaviors and to improve prototypes.
The resulting research and lines of inquiry, which incorporate Weinberg’s own experience, could transform assistive technology design.
The field is taking notice. Weinberg’s first paper—”Why so serious?”—won best paper honorable mention and jury best demo awards at the prestigious Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). Those are highly coveted commendations according to his advisor, Thijs Roumen, assistant professor at Cornell Tech.
“Tobi really is a trailblazer,” said Roumen, who has a joint appointment in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. “He’s been developing technology while also using the technology, which changes the way it’s shaped and the way we reflect on it. In the process, he’s hitting on a richness that is going to make the future of AAC technology much much better, and he’s also inspiring a whole generation of researchers.”
Judith Bailey-Hung, supervisor of the YAI Center for Innovation and Engagement, said he’s also inspiring the AAC users involved in his studies.
“For the people we support, it was very powerful to see that this person’s working on their Ph.D., they’re interested in improving how you communicate, and they want to involve you in that process,” said Bailey-Hung, who has supervised three Cornell Tech interns as part of a larger partnership. “It gives them a voice and a way to advocate for themselves.”
Humor, backchanneling and AI villains
Heather Klippel, who has cerebral palsy and lives in a YAI group home, has similar frustrations with AAC devices to Weinberg’s—she gets overwhelmed when too many people are speaking and struggles to convey tone and humor.
“Those things are very hard to express as a nonverbal person,” Klippel wrote.
In the first of two studies, Weinberg interviewed Klippel and six others and designed an interface that could help users write jokes or humorous comments they can then interject in real time.
“There is an inherent tradeoff between agency and efficiency when designing AI tools that support communication,” Weinberg wrote. “While an AI auto-complete will enable making humorous comments faster, there is a risk that it diminishes the user’s sense of agency by making jokes for users instead of with the user.”
Weinberg designed interfaces that explored this tradeoff—in one, users selected keywords they wanted the AI to use in crafting a joke; in another, they were able to edit and modify AI-written jokes; and in another, they could simply choose a joke that the AI provided.
“What we found is in time-pressured scenarios, like making a humorous comment, AAC users were willing to give up some agency to deliver the comment faster,” Weinberg wrote. “This challenged the existing research that said AAC users care most about maximum agency, which is true in general but not always.”
At 15, Weinberg lost the ability to speak and found it harder to communicate certain aspects of his personality, like humor. Now, he’s working to make assistive communication technologies more expressive. Credit: Alexandra Bayer/Cornell University
That led Weinberg and his collaborators to think about the purpose of humor. Often, he said, the joke itself is less important than participation and engagement in the conversation. The team started to consider other types of “backchanneling,” or ways we communicate engagement, alongside the primary conversation, like saying “uh-huh” or nodding.
In a second study with the AAC users—resulting in a paper, “One does not simply ‘Mm-hmm'” presented at the ASSETS’ Conference on Computers and Accessibility in October—Weinberg and his team found that the participants formed their own micro-culture of bachkchanneling, such as tapping their armrests to indicate agreement or raising eyebrows. The interviews and observations led him and his team to recommend a design approach that amplifies and incorporates what users are already doing, rather than imposing mainstream behaviours.
“There can be this tendency to just want to build an app and solve a problem,” Roumen said. “But by asking ourselves these fundamental questions and driving the curiosity that Tobi brings as a researcher to really understand what’s happening, we can now start to understand how we can be really impactful in this space.”
Those fundamental questions are often also ethical ones. For a third paper currently in submission, Weinberg developed an app that collected everything he’d typed over a period of seven months and used the text to train a large language model that could help facilitate and speed his communication.
While the resulting “AI-twin” captured a verbal identity, incorporating characteristic phrases and Argentinian slang, it failed in practice to suggest or provide that language in appropriate contexts and risked exposing private information at the wrong times. Weinberg also felt the app dampened control over his own self-presentation.
“AI is a very wonderful but dangerous technology, especially if it mediates everything we say as AAC users,” Weinberg wrote. “So, my work serves both sides, providing design guidelines for future developers and also playing the villain, warning of the socio-technical implications of AI in the lives of AAC users like myself.”
Building community, inspiring others
Weinberg disassembled his first computer at age 2 and at age 7 told his parents he wanted to invent things that would help people. But when he arrived at Cornell Tech for a summer internship in 2022, he didn’t know what a Ph.D. was and did not see it in his future.
Wendy Ju, associate professor at Cornell Tech, encouraged Weinberg to apply for the doctoral program after completing his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. In 2023, he joined Roumen’s lab, intending to work on digital fabrication. But Roumen encouraged Weinberg, as he does all students, to find a project he really cared about.
“I told Thijs, there was this other thing I really care about, but neither of us has any experience with it,” Weinberg wrote. “He was on board to give it a try, and here we are.”
Weinberg and Roumen teamed with Stephanie Valencia at the University of Maryland, who specializes in AI and agency in AAC use. After overcoming steep learning curves—embarking on what Roumen calls “a journey” for them both—Weinberg is now inspiring others.
“It amazes me that somebody with an AAC device was going for his doctorate,” Klippel wrote. “I know that people with disabilities can achieve such high degrees in education, but it was quite an honor to actually meet somebody like this.”
The studies have also built community. Klippel said she became closer to another AAC user during the course of the studies and continued the friendship.
For Weinberg, seeing that connection form was one of the most rewarding parts of the research. “It didn’t feel like a workshop, it felt like a couple of friends hanging out and sharing anecdotes about our AAC hurdles and use, not only for me but also for them,” he wrote.
The other reward was seeing the participants use the systems to express themselves in new ways. Weinberg often replays a video from the humor study, of an AAC user working with the platform to write a joke and bursting into laughter at what she had created.
“That made all the hard work worth it,” he wrote.
Looking ahead, Weinberg hopes to reframe AAC—not as a workaround for missing speech but as a medium of expression. “This vision represents a step toward the broader goal of enabling AAC users to fully participate in spoken communication and to flourish in society,” he wrote.
A pioneering technology for coating plants with a thin wax layer is expected to dramatically reduce the agricultural use of pesticides
According to UN reports, plant diseases destroy about one-third of the world’s agricultural yield, causing an estimated annual economic loss exceeding CAD $95 billion. Findings recently published in Small present SafeWax – a new technology developed at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Funded by an EU EIC Pathfinder grant, SafeWax could reduce crop disease impact and lower pesticide use by more than 50%. Coordinated by Prof. Boaz Pokroy from the Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, the SafeWax project collaborated with another Technion laboratory led by Prof. Ester Segal from the Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, along with four international partner organizations – BASF (Germany), the University of Bologna (Italy), the French Wine and Vine Institute (France), and Eurofins (France).
Traditional methods of combating plant diseases rely heavily on chemical pesticides, which seep into the soil and endanger both the environment and human health. Moreover, many pesticides have lost their effectiveness due to bacterial resistance. The SafeWax technology offers a promising, sustainable alternative to pesticide use. Through a simple spray application, it creates a thin, uniform, biodegradable layer on the plant surface of superhydrophobic (water-repellent) material that passively prevents fungal spores from germinating, thereby inhibiting disease development. The inspiration for this innovative technology is the cuticle – a natural waxy layer that covers plants such as lotus leaves and broccoli, enabling them to self-clean by repelling bacteria and other contaminants.
In the experiments described in the article published in Small, first authored by Dr. Iryna Polishchuk from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the new technology was tested on tomatoes, peppers, grapevines, and bamboo plants, and proved both feasible and effective in protecting these plants without affecting essential physiological processes such as photosynthesis. Furthermore, the unique coating filters intense UV radiation that damages crops, shielding the plant from heat and UV exposure while slowing dehydration. Moreover, the coating is transparent to visible light necessary for photosynthesis. The coating material is based on biodegradable fatty acids that can be derived from food waste, thus also helping to reduce global food waste.
The researchers estimate that the SafeWax technology could reduce the use of chemical pesticides by at least 50%. According to Prof. Pokroy, “This is an ecological, efficient, and multifunctional alternative for crop protection, especially in view of challenges that climate change poses to modern agriculture. Beyond providing passive defense against diseases, it enhances the environmental resilience of plants and reduces the ecological footprint of crop cultivation.”
Technion researchers find protein-disposal system in brain cells may actually spread toxic proteins linked to Alzheimer’s; instead of destroying them, cells sometimes expel them to neighbouring tissues, potentially accelerating disease progression in brain
In a surprising discovery, researchers at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology have found that a cellular system tasked with disposing of toxic proteins—crucial in preventing Alzheimer’s disease—may actually be helping the disease spread across the brain.
The study, led by Professor Michael Glickman, dean of the Technion’s Faculty of Biology, and postdoctoral researcher Dr. Ajay Wagh, reveals that, instead of breaking down defective proteins inside the cell, neurons may be pushing this “trash” into surrounding brain tissue. Their findings were published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
At the heart of the discovery is a mutated version of the protein ubiquitin, called UBB+1. While healthy ubiquitin helps cells identify and eliminate damaged proteins, UBB+1 disrupts this process and leads to toxic buildup, which is one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.
Normally, a cellular protein called p62 helps neutralise this threat by packaging UBB+1 into protective vesicles, keeping it from damaging the cell. The vesicles can then take one of two paths: they’re either sent to the cell’s internal recycling centre (the lysosome), or they’re expelled into the space between cells.
It’s the second option that poses a danger. According to the Technion team, once UBB+1 is released into the brain’s extracellular fluid, fragments of the toxic protein can leak out and be absorbed by neighbouring neurons—potentially accelerating the spread of Alzheimer’s throughout the brain.
“We all want someone to take out the trash,” Glickman said. “But in this case, the cells are dumping their trash on their neighbors. Although this solves an acute problem for the individual cell, it may cause long-term damage to the entire tissue.”
The discovery could pave the way for earlier diagnoses of Alzheimer’s, possibly through testing cerebrospinal fluid for markers of UBB+1. It may also open the door to personalised treatments targeting the faulty disposal pathway.
The research was funded by the Israel Science Foundation and the European Research Council.
The Technion held a festive reception for 32 new faculty members who joined the university this year
Thirty-two new faculty members one third of them women, joined the Technion in the current academic year. The research fields represented by the new faculty are wide-ranging, and their diverse specializations reflect the future of science and technology at the global forefront. Among them are experts in quantum communication, AI and deep learning, mathematics and data science, among other fields. They include theorists and experimentalists, inventors, engineers, and, of course, many physicians.
In recent years, the Technion has emphasized incorporating arts and humanities into its curriculum, as well as expanding research in the Department of Humanities and Arts. As a result, the new faculty members include scholars whose work focuses on the history of science, the intersection between the philosophy of science and contemporary science, and even musical communication.
Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan welcomed the new faculty members and said: “To understand the importance of the Technion in the development of the State of Israel, one must ask what the country would look like without the Technion, which was founded a quarter of a century before the state itself. I have no doubt that Israel would have looked completely different. Here at the Technion, the Start-Up Nation was born, but not just that – also many other important industries in the food, aeronautics, chemistry, defense, and other sectors were established here. From my broad perspective as President of the Technion, I am constantly exposed to the institution’s glorious legacy, a legacy that began in the early 20th century, when the idea of establishing a technological university in the Land of Israel was first conceived. Today, you are joining a long tradition of teaching and research, and I am already curious to see the mark you will leave on the world.”
“You are the future of the Technion as the world moves forward and new opportunities for research and education emerge – opportunities we cannot even imagine,” said Prof. Oded Rabinovitch, Vice President for Academic Affairs, to the new faculty members. “You are the future of the Technion when, amid all the technological bustle in the research laboratory and in the classroom, the human factor rises and continues to serve as the leading axis. You are the future of the Technion when challenges arrive at our doorstep that cannot be anticipated. You are the future of the Technion as it continues to lead science, industry, and society in the State of Israel and beyond, past the visible horizon. The future, yours and ours, is a shared future. Your part in this shared future is to succeed, simply to succeed. Our part is to provide you with the environment needed for success: a physical and research environment, and a sharp, open, inclusive, and respectful intellectual environment befitting a supportive academic community. An environment that will enable you to research and teach in your own way. An independent environment, free of external interference and foreign considerations, and one in which the values of our ethical code – pursuit of truth, integrity, responsibility, and freedom of research and expression – are realized without compromise. I am glad that we chose you to be part of our shared future, and I am especially glad that you chose us. I promise that we will do everything to be worthy of that choice.”
The new faculty members are
Schulich Faculty of Chemistry: Dr. Ron Tenne
Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering: Dr. Arad Lang, Dr. Arava Zohar
Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dr. Huaquan Ying, Dr. Nachman Malkiel, Dr. Rui Yao
Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences: Dr. Nadav Merlis, Dr. Yael Travis-Lumer, Dr. Or Sharir, Dr. Assaf Shocher
Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dr. Aviv Karnieli, Dr. Nicolas Wainstein, Dr. Eran Lustig
Henry and Marilyn Taub Faculty of Computer Science: Dr. Oded Stein
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering: Dr. Majdi Gzal
Faculty of Biomedical Engineering: Dr. Eddy Solomon, Dr. Shira Landau
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning: Dr. Tamara Kerzhner, Assoc. Prof. Yael Alef, Dr. Ofer Berman, Dr. Hatzav Yaffe
Faculty of Mathematics: Dr. Yatir Benari Halevi, Dr. Alan Lew
Faculty of Physics: Prof. Julien Fuchs
Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine: Dr. Daria Pavlov Amiad, Dr. Michal Meir
TCE – Technion Computer Engineering Center: Dr. Yaniv David
Department of Humanities and Arts: Prof. Eitan Globerson, Dr. Assaf Weksler-Fleshner, Dr. Matityahu Yosef Boker, Associate Professor of Creative Arts Orit Wolf, Dr. Topaz Halperin
Pigs have long carried a bad reputation. They are often described as dirty, greedy animals that eat everything in sight and spend their days lying around. In reality, none of these stereotypes are true. Pigs are intelligent, have a highly developed sense of smell and like to stay clean. They often roll in mud not because of laziness but to cool down and protect themselves from parasites.
But there is another, far more important fact about pigs: they are now at the center of a medical revolution that could transform the future of organ transplantation. With demand for donor organs vastly outpacing supply, researchers are turning to genetically engineered pigs as potential life-saving sources of hearts, kidneys, livers and even lungs.
(Photo: Shutterstock)
The idea is not based on vague similarity to humans but on precise genetic engineering. By shutting off certain pig genes, such as the one that produces a sugar molecule called alpha-gal, and adding human genes, scientists can make pig organs appear more “human” to the immune system, reducing the risk of immediate rejection.
A global shortage
The need is urgent. More than 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for an organ transplant, most of them for kidneys, and thousands die each year before a donor is found. Israel faces a similar shortage. According to Prof. Mordechai Kramer, head of the lung transplant unit at Rabin Medical Center (Beilinson Hospital), only about 40 lung transplants are performed each year in Israel, while some 180 patients remain on the waiting list. “People die while waiting,” Kramer said. “And that’s just lungs. What about all the other organs?”
Clinical trials approved in the US
In recent months, two milestones have made headlines. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration for the first time approved large-scale clinical trials of pig organ transplants in humans. The biotech company eGenesis, a leader in the field, is set to begin pig kidney transplants this year, aiming to treat dozens of patients in a monitored trial. The step marks a shift from rare “compassionate use” cases to systematic research with broad patient groups.
The key lies in the blood vessels that connect directly with human circulation. In pigs, the sugar alpha-gal on the surface of cells triggers an immediate, destructive immune response. Using CRISPR gene-editing tools, companies disable this gene and add human genetic material to soften the body’s attack, allowing the organ to survive longer.
A pig lung that breathed inside a human body
Meanwhile, in China, doctors achieved a stunning breakthrough in May 2024 by transplanting a genetically engineered pig lung into a brain-dead 39-year-old man. The lung functioned for nine days before doctors ended the trial. Crucially, it did not trigger immediate rejection. “The great achievement is that hyper-acute rejection did not occur,” said Dr. Liran Levy, head of the lung transplant program at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv.
Lungs are among the most complex organs to transplant because of their constant exposure to air and microbes, making them highly likely to trigger immune responses. That a pig lung could function for more than a week inside a human body offers new hope.
Pig livers and kidneys
Other recent experiments also show progress. In March 2025, researchers in China reported that a genetically modified pig liver survived for 10 days inside a brain-dead patient, producing bile and proteins while maintaining blood flow. In April 2025, doctors in New York announced that Tuanna Looney, a 54-year-old Alabama woman, had lived for 130 days with a pig kidney — the longest period ever recorded.
“She had been on dialysis since 2016 and was not eligible for a human kidney transplant,” said Prof. Eytan Mor, director of kidney transplants at Sheba Medical Center. “The fact that a pig kidney survived more than four months is remarkable. If we reach the point where it can last five years, that would be a giant leap for medicine.”
Israeli contributions
Israel has also played a role in advancing the field. In 2021, a team at Beilinson Hospital developed a method of stripping pig blood vessels and coating them with human cells taken from placentas. The approach makes the organ’s blood vessel lining look human to the immune system, complementing CRISPR-based genetic editing.
“This point of contact between the organ and human blood is critical,” said the researchers. “If we can reduce the immune system’s recognition of the organ as foreign, we can extend survival.”
Ethics and Jewish law
For many Jews, the use of pigs raises cultural and religious questions. But Prof. Kramer emphasized that Jewish law permits the use of pig organs to save lives. “There’s no prohibition here. This is about pikuach nefesh — saving a life. Even today, heart valves from pigs are used in patients. I cannot imagine any rabbi forbidding the use of a pig organ if it means saving someone.”
Beyond pigs: bioprinting and stem cells
At the same time, researchers are exploring other frontiers. At the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Prof. Shulamit Levenberg leads Israel’s first center for 3D bioprinting, which develops tissue from stem cells. “We are not yet able to print a fully functional lung that can oxygenate blood,” she said, “but the technology is advancing. For now, transplants from animals are closer to clinical use than 3D-printed organs.”
Still, scientists see the fields converging. Some are working on “universal” human stem cells for bioprinting, while others are engineering pigs to reduce rejection. The ultimate goal is to produce safe, reliable organs on demand.
Israeli health tech startup NeuroKaire, Cofounded by Dr. Daphna Laifenfeld who has a PhD in Medical Science and Molecular Biology from Technion, has rolled out a blood test in the US and Israel that they say can measure the responsiveness of a patient with major depressive disorder to common antidepressants.
This week, NeuroKaine have rolled out a blood test in the US and Israel that they say can measure the responsiveness of a patient with major depressive disorder to common antidepressants.
NeuroKaire says its novel, AI-assisted tech uses stem cells to create a brain proxy against which drugs can be tested to find the best one.
Depression is one of the most common forms of mental disorder, affecting more than 330 million people worldwide. Treatment methods rely primarily on a taxing trial-and-error process to find the right prescription drug, which can take years.
In Israel, the psychological toll of 23 months of war and counting has made the need for effective mental health treatment felt more than ever.
The blood test, promises to create a platform for personalised treatment of mental disorders. Guided by the test results, clinicians and psychiatrists can determine which treatment is most suited to a particular patient’s condition.
“For far too long, patients with clinical depression have endured a grueling trial-and-error process before finding an effective treatment,” Cohen Solal told The Times of Israel. “Around one-third of the time, a patient improves or recovers from depression when seeking treatment, and around two-thirds of the time, physicians will need to change their medication or dosage multiple times.”
“Typically, the guessing game of identifying the right drug for a patient with clinical depression can take between 12 to 18 months. We are bringing that down to two months,” she claimed.
The blood test began being offered in Israel and the US this week, though the new technology still needs more research and trial data to determine its effectiveness, according to Prof. Mark Weiser, who heads the Psychiatry Department at Sheba Medical Centre.
“NeuroKaire’s unique combination of stem-cell technology, genomics, and AI represents an evolutionary step forward from traditional pharmacogenetics and is promising, but more research needs to be done in large clinical trials with hundreds of patients, comparing the outcomes with those that haven’t taken the test, and further improve results for patients,” Weiser said.
NeuroKaire’s blood-based screening tool, BrightKaire, was recently granted laboratory-developed test regulatory approval from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the US, making it the first clinically deployed test based on neurons derived from blood, the startup said.
Cohen Solal and Laifenfeld have decades of academic expertise in brain research and personalised medicine between them. Cohen Solal spent a decade studying psychiatric disorders at Oxford University, University College London and Columbia University. Laifenfeld has worked in brain research at the Technion and Harvard University, and has over 20 years of experience in personalised medicine, including serving as head of precision medicine at Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries.
The two neuroscientists met when Cohen Solal immigrated from the US to Israel in 2017, and they decided to join forces to found NeuroKaire in 2018. The two shared a vision to develop a more precise personalised test that clinicians could use in order to pick the optimal drug therapy for patients with clinical depression.
NeuroKaire’s R&D team then turns the stem cells into frontal brain neurons — the brain region most implicated in mental illness and depression — and tests them against 70 different antidepressants, helping to pinpoint the most effective drug or combination therapy for each patient.
Using a proprietary AI platform to analyse personalised data, including a patient’s genetic data, medical history, and microscopic neuronal imaging, the test produces a report detailing the patient’s response to different medications, including the likelihood of side effects.
“Depression is reduced connectivity in the brain, often expressed in a lack of motivation,” Cohen Solal explained. “With our brain in a dish platform, we have a window into the brain and can analyze how well those neurons are connecting or communicating after exposure to antidepressants, and we turn that into a quantitative readout for how strongly a drug has affected connectivity in those samples.”
“Our brain in a dish technology tells you not just if the drug gets past the liver to the brain, but what it does in the brain and whether it works,” Cohen Solal noted.
Cohen Solal said that the startup has validated the technology in clinical trials of the blood-based diagnostic in Israel in collaboration with Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan and Geha Mental Health Center in Petah Tikva. In the US, trials were conducted at Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia and in collaboration with the National Institute of Mental Health. In addition, NeuroKaire has formed partnerships with Israeli biotech companies Clexio and Neurosense.
“In the past two decades, our knowledge of human genetics and brain biology has advanced at an unprecedented pace, but it is still limited,” said Weiser. “The underlying problem is that when a patient comes for treatment, there is no test based on biology as to whether I should prescribe Prozac or a different antidepressant, but it is based on consultation and clinical impressions.”
Weiser said other companies that have developed blood tests based on genes to determine the best drug treatment for depression, were not well-validated.
In 2023, NeuroKaire expanded to the US and opened a commercial lab, while its R&D center, employing 25 people, is based in Tel Aviv. To date, the startup has raised $25 million from venture capital investors, including GreyBird Ventures, Meron Capital, Jumpspeed Venture Partners and Sapir Ventures.
“Israel has fantastic life sciences and neuroscience PhDs, which is wonderful for hiring great R&D scientists,” Cohen Solal said. “It’s a mission of ours because of Israel and because of the war to launch this test here as well, and we are very happy to be able to help in this time of need.”
A report published by the State Comptroller’s Office earlier this year found that approximately 3 million Israeli adults may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, or anxiety as a direct consequence of the events of the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel and subsequent war in Gaza.
“Many of the drugs overlap for depression and PTSD,” said Cohen Solal. “Physicians can use our technology to help them choose between PTSD medications as well.”
“But in the future, we will specifically be recruiting cohorts of PTSD patients so we can validate it as well in the PTSD setting,” she added.
Cohen Solal said that depression is the first indication, but going forward, tests for other neurological conditions are being planned using the same method.
“NeuroKaire’s mission is to bring precision medicine to the brain,” said Cohen Solal. “Next year, we will be starting our studies in ADHD. That’s going to be our next indication.”
