EMET_PRIZE_2017

RUTH ARNON (Wikimedia Commons)
MICHAEL SELA (Wikimedia Commons)
A spotlight on Israel’s
two scientific pioneers
• By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Prof. Michael Sela and Prof.
Ruth Arnon – both world-renowned
scientists – have
worked together for six decades,
she originally as his student at the
Weizmann Institute of Science and
then as his research partner and
friend.
Today, he at 93 and she at 84
years of age, both continue to
work in their Weizmann labs – and
they are together members of a
eight-person Award Committee
appointed by the prime minister
and the A.M.N. Foundation for the
Advancement of Science, Art and
Culture responsible for a unique
award.
The EMET Prize is a $1 million
annual prize given for excellence in
academic and professional achievements
by the A.M.N. Foundation.
It was endowed in 1999 by the late
Alberto Moscona Nisim, a Mexican
friend of Israel who objected to the
fact that, at that time, no Israeli scientists
had received Nobel Prizes.
“This was before Prof. Avraham
Hershko and Prof. Aaron Ciechanover
(along with US scientist
Irwin Rose) received the 2004
Nobel Prize for the discovery of
ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation,”
she pointed out.
Sela is working on fighting cancer,
while Arnon is busy both on an
anti-cancer vaccine and developing
a universal influenza vaccine
that would not have to be injected
every year.
Together, however, along with
the late Dvora Teitelbaum, they
developed over many years the
blockbuster drug to alleviate multiple
sclerosis (MS) named Copaxone.
Originally called COP-1, it
was shown in their lab to efficiently
suppress experimental autoimmune
encephalomyelitis – an animal
model of brain inflammation
– and to be clinically beneficial
in MS. It has since helped many
hundreds of thousands of patients
around the world by reducing the
number and severity of neurological
attacks.
In MS, the body’s immune system
plunders and damages the
myelin sheath surrounding nerves
in the brain and spinal cord that
constitute the central nervous
system. Acting like insulation on
electrical wires, the myelin sheath
facilitates the conduction of nerve
signals along pathways. But when
it is degraded, nerve signals are
weakened or silenced, resulting in
impaired functioning of systems
that those nerves serve. “When
we started the research, we didn’t
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