2011 EDITION

“In my country, women
mainly study the socalled
’pure’ sciences.
Consequently, we
contribute more than
men to the life sciences,
like biology and ecology.”
ISRAEL
Neurobiology
Our conscious vision is triggered by
the complex and rapid activation of the
temporal and frontal lobes of the brain.
Although the precise moment when
this happens remains a mystery and
has fuelled intense scientific debate,
it is also a vital challenge for the treatment
of certain diseases. By seeking
to understand this mechanism, it
should be possible to help people with
consciousness disorders such as coma
patients.
Fascinated by the human brain, Hagar
gelbard-Sagiv, 31, has a PhD in neurosciences
from the Weizmann Institute
of Science in Rehovot, Israel and has
focused her work on the role of nerve
Ladan
Teimoori-Toolabi
HOST INSTITUTION:
The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer
Center, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore,
Maryland, USA
Colorectal cancer, the second most common form of
cancer in women and the third most common for men, is
often detected at a late stage in Iranian patients, making
treatment more difficult. Moreover, Iran does not have an
organized cancer-screening programme.
A certified medical doctor with a PhD in medical biotechnology,
Ladan Teimoori-Toolabi, 34, is a postdoctoral researcher
at the Pasteur Institute in Tehran. Her research
focuses on developing gene therapy for colorectal cancers.
Ladan plans to use her fellowship to investigate
whether colorectal cancer can be reliably detected using
blood samples, which she believes would be much more
acceptable in her country.
She plans to work on methylation, a complex biochemical
modification process that can intervene in the repair
of DNA, influencing the body’s capacity to repair damaged
cells before they become cancerous. Methylation
also exists in the development of cancers, blocking the
normal functioning of genes and altering their activity.
At the fellowship host institution in the United States,
Ladan will use blood and tissue samples taken from
HOST INSTITUTION:
Division of Engineering and Applied Science,
California Institute of Technology (Caltech),
Pasadena, USA
cells in memory, recall and visual perception. She
plans to take direct electrophysiological recordings
of neuron activity in the brains of consenting patients
who have undergone neurosurgery to treat epilepsy.
During these sessions, patients will be presented with
two different images simultaneously, one in front of
each eye. By measuring activity in different parts of the
brain when the message is interpreted, Hagar hopes
to track down when and where in the brain the visual
signal of the two images enters consciousness and is
interpreted as a single image.
Hagar gelbard-Sagiv sees this research fellowship as
an excellent opportunity to prepare to set up her own
laboratory. To continue benefiting from clinical data for
her research, she hopes to pursue her collaboration,
notably with a neurosurgery department in an Israeli
hospital.
IRAN
Medical biotechnology
colorectal cancer patients in Iran to study
the methylation state of genes associated
with the cancer. She will compare these
samples with ones taken from healthy
people and hopes to find a correlation
between the methylation state of the
genes and the different stages of cancer.
She will also study the same patients’
response to treatment and their survival
rates to see whether the methylation state
can be used both as an early non-invasive
diagnostic test and as a prognostic
test for colorectal cancer.
When she returns to Iran, Ladan Teimoori-Toolabi
would like to work on developing
this test and apply it to other cancers,
such as pancreatic and lung cancer.
Hagar
gelbard-Sagiv
“I hope my research will
bring us closer to understanding
the mechanisms
that make us conscious
beings, as well as help
people with consciousness
disorders.”