Technion Champion
Detroiter Larry Jackier heads international board of Israel's high-tech university.
Bill Carroll
Special to the Jewish News
A
Larry Jackier of West Bloomfield is the first Detroiter to become chairman of
Technion's international board of governors.
t the ripe old age of 60, Israel is
still young compared to its most
famous university — the Israel
Institute of Technology, known throughout
the Jewish world as Technion. The school
was launched in 1924 in what then was
Palestine, 24 years before Israel was born in
1948, and now is nearing its 85th anniver-
sary.
"Many people are surprised to learn
Technion was under way long before the
State of Israel came into being; it's a marvel-
ous place of research and learning and has
been very instrumental to the nation's well
being all these years:' said Larry Jackier of
West Bloomfield, who late last year became
chairman of Technion's international board
of governors, the first Detroiter in that role.
"It's amazing how, way back then, some-
one realized it would be necessary to har-
ness all that Jewish brainpower and creativ-
ity,' Jackier said. "Technion now stands as a
world leader in high-tech and other cutting-
edge fields. Without it, Israel would still be a
semi-sophisticated, agrarian society instead
of a leading player in the global high-tech
market. The school's basic mission contin-
ues to be education and research in science
and technology."
Technion is an oval-shaped campus of 85
buildings over 300 acres on the slopes of the
Carmel Mountains overlooking Haifa Bay.
Current enrollment is 13,500 students with
826 faculty members, some of whom have
won Nobel prizes.
But there were only 17 graduates, in civil
engineering and architecture, in the first
graduating class in 1929; and they were
thrilled by the involvement of famed Jewish
scientist Albert Einstein, who visited the
campus several times. He was president of
the German Technion Society, a forerun-
ner of sorts of the current New York-based
American Technion Society, which now rais-
es about $85 million a year for the school.
"The money is put to good use," Jackier
stressed, pointing to development of heart
stents, cancer-fighting chemotherapies,
electric field therapy for brain tumors,
Parkinson's disease drugs, stem-cell
research, a tiny camera that can be swal-
Technion Innovations
Dr. Rafi Beyar, former dean of
Technion's medical school – the only
one of Israel's seven universities with
such a school – is credited with devel-
oping the heart stent, a metal mesh
tube used to prop open clogged arter-
ies. It's one of many Technion medical
breakthroughs. This is how Technion
describes some of them:
• Repairing broken hearts: Clusters of
embryonic stem cells are isolated and
coaxed to grow into any tissue, from
skin for treating burns, to neurons for
aging brains.
• New muscle with hustle: Already
a godsend for burn victims, tissue
implants made from scratch in a
laboratory, sculpted on a tiny three-
dimensional plastic scaffold with a
built-in supply of blood vessels, can
replace or repair damaged muscle
tissue.
• Disarming cancer's defenses:
Technion scientists have found ways
to delay tough-spreading breast,
colon and leukemia cancer growth
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August 21 a 2008
and have developed
cancer-fighting chemo-
therapies.
• Electric field therapy
for brain tumors:
Low-intensity electri-
cal fields delivered via
insulated electrodes
on the scalp can more
than double the sur-
vival rates for people
with a common type
of brain tumor. The
therapy disrupts cancer cell division,
but leaves normal cells unharmed.
• Parkinson's Drug: FDA-approved
Azilect (Rasagiline) is halting the
death of brain cells causing the
disease. A derivative of this drug is
putting off Alzheimer's disease symp-
toms.
• A lemon-fresh idea for fighting asth-
ma: An inhalant made from limonene,
the main component in the essential
oil of citrus fruits, can benefit asthma
sufferers.
• Respiration monitor: Development
of a novel, non-invasive device for
detecting early-stage respiratory
irregularities in premature babies,
children and adults receiving inten-
sive care.
• Autoimmune disease: A vaccine that
boosts the body's defenses, amplify-
ing production of antibodies against
the protein, IP-10.
• Forever young: Technion scientists
won the Nobel Prize for discovering
Ubiquitin, the component involved in
the aging of cells.
- Bill Carroll
Left: Technion professor Moussa Youdim
holds the Parkinson's drug Azilect
he developed and green tea, which he
found to contain an antioxidant that
staves off Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
Middle: Profs. Avram Hershko and Aaron
Ciechanover won the Nobel Prize in
2004 for their research on how the
body destroys unwanted proteins, a
process known as the ubiquitin system.
Right: Dr. Lior Gepstein has coaxed
embryonic stem cells to develop into
heart cells and subsequently into beat-
ing heart muscle.