Collaborating on Cancer Research in the Middle East

srael, despite being a small nation, has made major contributions in cancer research,” says Joseph D. Rosenblatt, M.D., associate director of clinical and translational research, chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at UM/Sylvester, and professor of medicine at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. “But what was once an important venue for international conferences has become less attractive as a result of events in the Middle East.”

Rosenblatt has teamed with Hyam I. Levitsky, M.D., from the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and Robert Korngold, Ph.D., from the Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey, to organize the inaugural Joint American-Israeli Conference on Cancer (JAICC), set to meet in Jerusalem March 16 through 18. They expect to spur enduring collaboration between top oncology researchers in the U.S. and Israel. The hope is the meetings will continue every two years, rotating between Israel and the three U.S. institutions.

“We feel that Israel, which is pound-for-pound a relative research powerhouse, has been isolated from the world scientific community as a result of the unfortunate events of the past four years,” says Rosenblatt. “The conference is interested in creating real opportunities for the development of new therapeutic, prognostic, and diagnostic approaches through the synergistic efforts of cancer scientists and physicians in Israel and the United States and the vigorous exchange of ideas.”

The JAICC will host more than 50 experts from more than a dozen institutions in the U.S. and Israel, including Avram Hershko, M.D., Ph.D., of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, who won a share of last year’s Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

“One of the reasons we invited Dr. Hershko as a keynote speaker was because we thought that what he’d done was of Nobel-laureate importance,” says Rosenblatt. “We were vindicated in our choice when, one day after we invited him, he actually won the Nobel Prize.”

Hershko shares the prize with Aaron Ciechanover, M.D., D.Sc., also at Technion, and Irwin A. Rose, Ph.D., of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

“Some of our own faculty were trained in Israel and have strong connections,” says Rosenblatt, “including Dr. Izidore Lossos, Dr. Eli Avisar, and many others.”

This first JAICC also will feature a mini-symposium on environmental carcinogenesis sponsored by the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute. Seed funding for the conference came from the Norman and Irma Braman Family Foundation, along with the Israel Cancer Association in the United States and Israel.

“The Israelis have made significant contributions, and this interchange will probably create new and productive collaborations that will benefit us all, especially our patients,” says Rosenblatt.

For more information about the conference, contact Kathy Salce at 305-243-1046.