,

The Neuman Family
and Staff of

Kibbutz Dream
To Cancer Expert

NICKY BLACKBURN

Special to The Jewish News

hen Professor Leo Sachs
was young, he dreamed
of founding a kibbutz in
Israel and even spent two
years as a farm laborer.
Today, however, Professor Sachs, a
professor at the Weizmann Institute of
Science in Israel, is renowned for pio-
neering of a very different nature. One
of the world's leading scientists in the
ares of cell biology and cancer•
research, Professor Sachs has made
fundamental contributions to his field
and paved the way for successful clini-
cal treatments.
At the very beginning of his scien-
tific career in Israel, Professor Sachs
had an idea that ultimately made it
possible to diagnose human diseases in
the womb. The year was 1952, and
• the German-born
Sachs, who had been
educated in England,
had just moved to the
new Jewish state. By
I then, he had aban-
doned his early dreams
of working the land in
favor of contributing
to the fledgling nation
- in the way he knew
best — through sci-
ence. He was recruited
to the Weizmann
Institute and asked to
initiate a research pro-
gram in genetics and
Leo Sachs
development.
Professor Sachs
- started working on a theory that
/–) human amniotic fluid, which bathes
the baby in the womb, contains fetal
cells that can provide information
about the fetus. His studies proved
him right. He showed that cells in the
fluid can be reliably used to tell the
sex of the baby before birth and also
reveal other important properties of
the fetus. This groundbreaking
research formed the basis for human
prenatal diagnosis by amniocentesis, a
diagnostic procedure used today in
millions of expectant mothers.
Shortly afterwards, Professor Sachs
moved to the Institute's newly-created
Experimental Biology Department
and asked himself two questions that
would form the basis of his research
over the following years. First, what
- controls the normal development of
different types of blood cells and sec-

Nicky Blackburn writes for World
Zionist Press Service.

STAR DELI

ond, what happens when normal
development goes wrong through dis-
ease? "I thought that by understanding
the normal process and what happens
in disease, I might be able to find a
way to control the disease," says Sachs.
In trying to answer these questions,
Professor Sachs made discoveries that
would serve as a cornerstone for cur-
rent blood cell research and lead to
major clinical applications. He devel-
oped the first-ever procedure to grow,
clone, and induce the development of
different types of normal blood cells in
a petri dish. Using this process-he dis-
covered and identified a family of pro-
teins, among them colony-stimulating
factors and some interleukins, that
control blood cell production in its
various stages.
A few years ago Professor Sachs
returned to a question that had trou-
bled him back in the early days of his
scientific work. "When
I first put normal
blood cells into a petri
dish, I found that with-
out the necessary
chemicals the cells
would die. I decided to
see if the materials
needed to keep normal
cells alive were the
same for leukemic
cells," says Professor
Sachs.
In normal circum-
stances, a cell is creat-
ed, lives and then dies,
and there is a balance
between the creation of
new cells and the death
of old ones. But in cancer cells this
balance is profoundly distorted.
Professor Sachs' present research
includes studies on the genetic
changes which take place in leukemic
cells enabling them to live.longer,
and on finding ways to "switch off"
these life-maintaining genes in the
cancer cells, so that they die like nor-
mal cells that the body no longer
needs. This research could provide
another new approach to cancer
treatment.
Contemplating 45 years of work,
Professor Sachs, who holds the Otto
Meyerhof Chair of Molecular Biology
at the Weizmann Institute, acknowl-
edges that it has not always been easy.
uJ enjoyed most of it, but not all," he
admits. "There have been ups and
downs. But overall I'm optimistic and
believe that all problems have solu-
tions. One has to be permanently
curious and keep on trying."

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