Submicron research: Prof. Mordechai Heiblum of The Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.

The Tel Aviv University
Faculty of Medicine has
programs that retrain phy-
sicians in pharmacy,
biotechnology, genetics, and
medical laboratory work, as
well as in physical and occu-
pational therapy and nurs-
ing. (Thanks to such pro-
grams, Israel has already
become one of the few devel-
oped without a nurs-
ing shortage.)
The Technion is steering
between 200 and 300 medi-
cal students and doctors
into a graduate medical
high-technology and re-
search program that its fac-
ulty of medicine shares with
its departments of computer
science and electrical, me-
chanical, and biomedical en-
gineering.
Approaches to the wealth
of talent among research
scientists and engineers
have been especially
imaginative. The luckiest of
the scientists, such as

Aleksandr Khain, 45, have
found astonishing profes-
sional matches: Mr. Khain,
who in Moscow was a trop-
ical meteorologist, of all
things, before was at best
allowed to visit Cuba to
study hurricanes; now, less
than a year after arriving in
Israel, he has secured a posi-
tion at the Hebrew Univer-
sity in which he has already
spent time working at the
U.S.'s National Hurricane
Center in Miami.
Four years ago, because
already many scientists
from the USSR had been
bringing with them ideas
that seemed to have com-
mercial potential, Herman
Branover, a respected im-
migrant scientist who had
come from Riga, Latvia, to
head Ben Gurion Universi-
ty's Center for Magne-
tohydrodynamics, set up an
organization to help estab-
lish private companies that
would develop and market

Top photo: Entrance to The Weizmann Institute. Above, The first building
on campus where Dr. Chaim Weizmann had his laboraory.

A Cure For 'Permanent' Damage?

M

ost of the body's
cells increase in
number through
childhood, and even in
adults many tissues re-
place themselves after
damage. But the nerves of
the brain and spinal cord
are different. Whereas in
the rest of the body - even
injured nerves have some-
times been known to recov-
er function by growing new
axons — the string-like ex-
tensions that allow neu-
rons to communicate with
other cells — in the brain
and spinal cord neurons
stop growing once a child
is born. If there is damage
or degeneration, it is per-
manent.
But doctors know that
when nerves are injured
it's often just the axons
that are destroyed; the

cell bodies remain alive.
For years neurologists
have dreamed of some-
how inducing the cells to
regenerate their damaged
axons and restore their
function.
Now research at Israel's
Weizmann Institute of
Science suggests that
someday such a miracle
may be possible. With the
knowledge that injured
nerves can regenerate
themselves in fish — and
the intriguing assumption
that in mammals it's not
something about the
nerves themselves that's
lacking but something
about the environment
surrounding the nerves —
the Weizmann team,
headed by neurobiologist
Michal Schwartz, corn-
pared the response they

found in mammals such
as rabbits. Sure enough,
Ms. Schwartz and her
group discovered, in fish
there are key factors sur-
rounding the nerves that
make for regrowth — fac-
tors that cannot be found
in rabbits. When the
group applied these fac-
tors to the damaged
nerves of rabbits, howev-
er, some of the axons
regrew.
The group is already
working on ways of refin-
ing their treatment. And
while regrowing axons is
still a far cry from guar-
anteeing a recovery of
function, Ms. Schwartz
and her group have their
sights set on exactly
that. D

G.G.