Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, and recently appointed Chief Scientific Adviser to
the UK Government, visited Israel as Henry Cohen Visiting Professor in May 2012.
Sir Mark started his tour of Israeli medicine and science at the Bar Ilan Medical School Faculty in
Safed, where he was shown round by Prof Michael Weingarten and Prof Mary Rudolf, both physicians
from the UK, who are making an important contribution to this new venture in the fields of medical
education and paediatric public health respectively. He heard about the potential impact of their
efforts on one of the less affluent parts of Israel.
In Haifa Sir Mark met with Prof Gad Rennert, Director of the Israeli National Cancer Centre, and
discussed the way that advances in genetic epidemiology are changing the way that we view cancer.
Prof Rennert described how he has developed systems for data access and retrieval on a national
level in Israel, and how these are generating ideas about new patterns of disease.
At the Technion and Rapaport School of Medicine in Haifa Sir Mark was welcomed by the President
and Vice – President, Profs Lavie and Golany. After hearing about the philosophy of the Technion’s
approach to biomedical research, and about further plans for development of the Technion – Cornell
campus, Sir Mark visited the Bioengineering Centre where the Director, Prof Dan Adam told him
about their main research themes, and Dr Shy Shoham, an ERC fellow, demonstrated his work on
imaging in animal models of neuro-ophthalmological development. Later at the Medical School he met
with the Dean, Prof Shalev, and heard about their research in immunology and rheumatology.
In Jerusalem Sir Mark was based at Mishkenot Sheananim, and in his London lecture he referred to
the connections between Montefiore and British medicine, via Thomas Hodgkin. He illustrated this
with images from the Wellcome collection which showed how the buildings had not changed
significantly.
His first meeting in Jerusalem was with Profs Habib and Rosen from the Brookdale Institute, who
explained their approach to monitoring and audit of health care provision. At the Hadassah and
Hebrew University campus in Ein Karem he was welcomed by the Director – General of Hadassah,
Prof Kokia, the Chairman of Medicine, Prof Naparstek, and the Dean of the Medical School, Prof
Leitersdorf, and a dinner in his honour was hosted by Hebrew University Vice – President, Carmi
Gillon, attended by Profs Arkin and Cedar. In Hadassah he was taken on a tour of the Accident and
Emergency Unit and of the new hospital facilities by Mr Ron Krummer. During this visit Sir Mark heard
presentations from several researchers and was able to question them about their work. Prof Paroush
noted the links he had established with the UK during his fellowship. Dr Yuval Dor described new
studies looking at the biology and biochemistry of pancreatic islet cells, and Sir Mark noted in his
lecture that this was linked to collaborative work (funded by the Wellcome in the UK) with Dr Andrew
Hattersley. Dr Ben Yehuda described new studies looking at nanotubes between bacteria, and Dr
Mandelboim described new work on the functional properties of natural killer cells and their receptors.
During his time in Jerusalem he also visited Shaarei Zedek Hospital where the Director, Prof
Jonathan Halevy, told him about healthcare delivery in Israel and then showed him round the hospital,
ending up in the Cardiology Department where a transcatheter aortic valve procedure was taking
place.
At the Weizmann Institute the President, Prof Zaifman, gave Sir Mark an introduction to the nature
and scope of their work and then accompanied him on a tour of animal imaging with Dr Neeman,
neuroscience with Prof Dudai and biochemistry with Prof Livneh. This tour concluded with a visit to
the unique laboratory where Dr Shoham is studying the neuroscience of smell. Afterwards Sir Mark
was entertained to dinner by Prof Zaijfman and several senior colleagues.
At Ben Gurion University Sir Mark heard several talks including an outline of their genetic studies by
Prof Birk, and an analysis of the effects of different dietary patterns by Prof Irit Shai. The visit
concluded with an exploration of the ethics of handling genetic diseases presented by Prof Raz.
The visit concluded with meetings at the Israeli Medical Association (Prof Feldman, Prof Lindner and
Adv Borow) to discuss questions about postgraduate medical education, and with a dinner hosted by
Prof Avi Israeli (Chief Scientist, Israeli Ministry of Health), attended by Prof Ruth Arnon, President of
the Israeli Academy of Sciences.
On Sir Mark’s return to the UK he delivered a lecture entitled “Extraordinary Opportunities” at the
Annual General Meeting of the Jewish Medical Association (UK). He told his audience about the
remarkable advances that have taken place, and interspersed his talk with examples taken from his
experiences in Israel. The changes in bioengineering and technology are having enormous impact on
what can be done for patients, and there have been considerable developments in brain imaging
which show great promise. Perhaps the most dramatic is that over the past ten years it has become
possible to sequence whole genomes, and the costs are falling dramatically. This will raise important
ethical problems, but is nonetheless going to be an invaluable tool for future researchers. In both the
UK and in Israel one of the most important challenges is to learn how to access and use all the new
data efficiently and effectively for research to improve health, which is the aim of the Wellcome Trust.