Faculty of Medicine Newsletter 60 (March 11-30, 2022)

ניוזלטרים בעברית, כאן.

PDF for easier reading, here.

New SPHERE Facebook page in Arabic

With the month of Ramadan just around the corner, The Russell Berrie Galilee Diabetes SPHERE has launched a new Facebook page in the Arabic language. Prof. Naim Shehadeh, the Director of SPHERE and and President of the Israeli Diabetes Association, will be offering a live Facebook lecture event about diabetes management and the Ramadan fast, on March 31, 2022. He will be discussing the needed preparations for a diabetic patient in order to ensure safe fasting while best fulfilling one's religious duty.

Rothschild Foundation Delegates Visit Azrieli Faculty

The Azrieli Faculty of Medicine was pleased to host delegates from the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation on March 27, 2022.

The Rothschild Foundation, major supporters of the Faculty, were given a tour of the site of the new education campus. Led by Noam David Reshelbach, Administrative Head of the Faculty, they met with Moshe Gottlieb (Senior Advisor to BIU's General Manager); Gadi Buganim (Head of BIU Construction Department); the Dean, Prof. Karl Skorecki, who gave a presentation about advanced educational methods; Ziv Steiner of Mochly-Eldar Architects; and Dr. Shai Bel, among others.

Community Health Education Workshop

A professional enrichment workshop for Clalit and Macabbi community health educators was held at the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine on March 21, 2022. Led by Dr. Lilach Malatskey, the workshop introduced Galilee doctors to Azrieli faculty, opened up a dialogue about teaching challenges, offered updated educational enrichment methods, and was an overall enjoyable day for health workers in the North.

Ninth Health Professions Conference

Attended by hundreds, this online conference sponsored by the Zefat Academic College on March 28, 2022 included speakers from the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine - the Dean, Prof. Karl Skorecki; Prof. Arnon Blum; Dr. Enav Yefet; Dr. Etty Kruzel-Davila; and Prof. Michael Edelstein. Lectures spanned topics such as Covid-19 from many aspects, telehealth, and gestational diabetes.

Prof. Eric Shinwell at Belgian Pediatric Society Conference

Prof. Eric Shinwell, Associate Dean of Medical Education, was the lead plenary speaker at the Golden Jubilee Conference of the Belgian Pediatric Society in Brussels on March 17, 2022. The topic of his lecture was Ethics and Decision Making at the Limits of Viability.

MD/PhD Ceremony

A modest ceremony in honor of eight MD/PhD students was held in the Dean's office on March 9, 2022. The students presented their areas of interest, the Dean offered warm and supportive words of encouragement, and a symbolic gift was presented to the students (sweatshirt and t shirt with logo).

The Azrieli Faculty of Medicine emphasizes the importance of this extremely selective and prestigious MD/PhD program.

Staff Day 2022

The administrative faculty enjoyed a fun day out, bonding, on March 24, 2021. After breakfast and escape room in Haifa, the team lunched at the Tishbi Winery in Binyamina then enjoyed a wine and chocolate tasting. A few pictures of the fun (albeit very cold and rainy!) day can be seen here.

Seminars

Faculty Seminar: Developing synthetic and analytical tools to study the effect of modifications on glycans binding preferences (Dr. Mattan Hurevich, HUJI)
Faculty Seminar: Development of novel drug aiming at disease-free aging (Prof. Einav Gross, HUJI-EK)
Upcoming Faculty Seminar: A tale of two cities – ESCRTs at the origin of Eukaryotes (Prof. Natalie Elia, BGU)
Faculty Seminar: Multi-scale mechanosensing: how cells test the rigidity of their environment (Dr. Haguy Wolfenson, Technion)

Promotions

Congratulations to Dr. Keren Agay-Shay upon her promotion to Senior Lecturer with tenure.
Congratulations to Prof. Orly Avni upon her promotion to Associate Professor with tenure.
Congratulations to Dr. David Enshel-Seijffers upon his promotion to Senior Lecturer with tenure.

Condolences

Condolences to Dr. Chen Shochat upon the passing of her mother.

Reminder: Ilanot

Applications for the new Ministry of Health Ilanot medical leadership program in the Galilee, will be accepted through the end of April 2022. A zoom Q&A session was held on March 21, 2022.

Incoming students (applicants) are encouraged to apply for Ilanot in parallel to Azrieli. Spread the word…

Upcoming Events

Teddy Bear Hospital (May 2, 2022)

Meet Our New Researcher

Three researchers are new to the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine: Dr. Ron Orbach, Dr. Hanna Keren, and Dr. Liron Rozenkrantz. We would like to introduce Dr. Hanna Keren, who just joined us in January 2022:

Dr. Keren obtained all her degrees at the Technion, undergraduate in Biotechnology Engineering, then Biomedical Engineering during her army service as a Captain in the Research Directorate of the IDF Intelligence Unit, and then a direct-track PhD (under Prof. Shimon Marom). Keren is the third generation at the Technion. Her research aims to bridge between the worlds of engineering and medicine. Her works investigated the phenomenon of neural network synchrony, identifying a unique cyclic propagation patterns in cultured networks, connecting neural networks to hardware networks for a hybrid brain-machine-interface, and developing closed-loop control circuits to artificially modify or stabilize neural activity. This work became integral to a major European consortium of the lab which led to several follow-up collaborations and gained her expertise in electrophysiology, brain-computer-interfaces, and the usage of closed-loop control framework as a novel research approach.

During her postdoc at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the US, she went on to developing the closed-loop adaptive experiments but now to control human mood and behavior, both in healthy and in depressed, while gaining a wide experience in human behavioral experiments, fMRI, and both computational and clinical psychiatry approaches.

In her lab, the Human Artificial Control - Keren lab (HACK lab), she will be further developing the individualized adaptive and dynamic experiments, also using virtual environments, human-machine-interfaces and physiological and neural recordings. These experiments will hopefully provide the capability to control and shift mood, cognitive and behavioral states, in the aim to understand better the mechanisms of mood changes, the limits of our mood and behavior, the relation to neural and physiological changes, the relation to other individuals, and moreover, to hopefully advance individualized clinical interventions for mental health.

If anyone plays tennis at the Faculty, besides being a researcher Hanny is always happy for a good Tennis match!

Website: What’s New?

Publications

Reminder that publications by Azrieli faculty are generally posted in chronological order based on publication date, per PubMed listings. If you have published an article recently that appears on PubMed but that was not listed in a Newsletter, I apologize, and please do let me know.

PLEASE NOTE: ALL PUBLICATIONS BY RESEARCHERS AT AZRIELI OR ITS AFFILIATE RESEARCH CENTERS MUST PROPERLY CITE THIS AFFILIATION: Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, Bar-Ilan University, Safed, Israel. IF YOU ARE UNSURE OR NEED GUIDANCE, PLEASE CONTACT US.

Sher Goaz, Daniel Glikman: Molecular Diagnosis of Cat Scratch Disease: a 25-Year Retrospective Comparative Analysis of Various Clinical Specimens and Different PCR Assays (Microbiol Spectr .)
Omry Koren: The effects of the Green-Mediterranean diet on cardiometabolic health are linked to gut microbiome modifications: a randomized controlled trial (Genome Med . )
Doron Sudarsky, Yarden Drutin, Fabio Kusniec, Liza Grosman-Rimon, Ala Lubovich, Wadia Kinany, Evgeni Hazanov, Michael Gelbstein, Edo Y Birati, Ibrahim Marai: Acute Kidney Injury Following Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation: Association with Contrast Media Dosage and Contrast Media Based Risk Predication Models (J Clin Med .)
Carmel Even, Sondra Turjeman, Omry Koren: Quinoa Soluble Fiber and Quercetin Alter the Composition of the Gut Microbiome and Improve Brush Border Membrane Morphology In Vivo ( Gallus gallus) (Nutrients . )
Zaina Adnan; Acromegaly: Clinical Care in Central and Eastern Europe, Israel, and Kazakhstan (Front Endocrinol (Lausanne) .)
Michael Edelstein, Karine Wiegler Beiruti, Hila Ben-Amram, Christian Sussan, Hani Asulin, David Strauss, Younes Bathish, Salman Zarka, Kamal Abu Jabal: Antibody-mediated Immunogenicity against SARS-CoV-2 following priming, boosting and hybrid immunity: insights from 11 months of follow-up of a healthcare worker cohort in Israel, December 2020-October 2021 (Clin Infect Dis .)
Enav Yefet, Naama Schwartz, Zohar Nachum: Characteristics of pregnancy with gestational diabetes mellitus and the consecutive pregnancy as predictors for future diabetes mellitus type 2 (Diabetes Res Clin Pract . )
Jacob Bornstein: Risk of Development of Vulvar Cancer in Women With Lichen Sclerosus or Lichen Planus: A Systematic Review (J Low Genit Tract Dis .)
Nasser Sakran: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD): a review of pathophysiology, clinical management and effects of weight loss (BMC Endocr Disord . )
Johnny S Younis: Does an endometrioma instigate an antral follicle count underestimation or anti-Müllerian hormone overestimation? (Am J Obstet Gynecol . )
Khalaf Kridin, Erez Onn: Determinants and Effectiveness of BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccination Among Patients with Atopic Dermatitis: A Population-Based Study (Am J Clin Dermatol .)
Amir A Kuperman: Syndromes predisposing to leukemia are a major cause of inherited cytopenias in children (Haematologica . )
Nizar Andria, Shemy Carasso, Edo Birati, Offer Amir, Ibrahim Marai: Safety of Catheter Ablation for Atrial Fibrillation in Patients with Mechanical Prosthetic Valves (J Cardiovasc Electrophysiol . )
Daniel Oren, Amiel A Dror, Tharwat Haj Khalil, Adeeb Zoabi, Asaf Zigron, Fares Kablan, Samer Srouji: Comparisons between lysis and lavage, intra-articular steroid injections, and three-point subsynovial steroid injections using operative single-cannula arthroscopy - A retrospective analysis (J Craniomaxillofac Surg .)
Ala Aiob, Ruba Toma, Maya Wolf, Yosef Haddad, Marwan Odeh: Cerebroplacental ratio and neonatal outcome in low-risk pregnancies with reduced fetal movement: A prospective study (Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol X .)
Amir Mari, Tawfik Khoury: The Impact of Bariatric Surgery on Diverticulitis Outcomes: Another Reason to Lose Weight (Obes Surg . )
Naaem Simaan: The Significance of Atrial Fibrillation in Patients With Transient Global Amnesia (Front Neurol .)
Liza Grosman-Rimon, Sagi Gleitman, Doron Sudarsky, Alla Lubovich, Shemy Carasso, Erez Kachel: Relationships among norepinephrine levels, exercise capacity, and chronotropic responses in heart failure patients (Heart Fail Rev .)
Shemy Carasso, Edo Y Birati: The Obesity Paradox in Real-World Nation-Wide Cohort of Patients Admitted for a Stroke in the U.S (J Clin Med .)
Nir Qvit: A Selective Inhibitor of Cardiac Troponin I Phosphorylation by Delta Protein Kinase C (δPKC) as a Treatment for Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury (Pharmaceuticals (Basel) .)
Shirley Sarig, Tsafrir Or, Gassan Moady, Shaul Atar: Cardiac assessment accuracy by students using palm-held ultrasound compared to physical examination by skilled cardiologists: a pilot study with a single medical student (Cardiovasc Ultrasound .)
Raneen Abu Shqara, Shany Or, Lior Lowenstein, Maya Frank Wolf: Clinical implications of the 100-g oral glucose tolerance test in the third trimester (Arch Gynecol Obstet .)

Staff Day יום גיבוש (March 2022)