Two Graduate Students Participate in Teva BioMix2023

The Azrieli Faculty of Medicine is excited that two of its graduate students - Orly Weissberg from Prof. Evan Elliott's lab and Aviv Mesika from Prof. Tzipora Falik-Zaccai's lab - won Teva's National BioInnovators scholarship.

As part of the program, each year 30 outstanding students from Israeli universities are selected to participate in the program. The students benefit from a Teva-led mentoring program for the year, with senior leaders in science and industry. The goal is to train students in the field and to give them the tools to turn a scientific idea from academia into an innovative business development that can solve a medical issue.

In May, Orly and Aviv even participated in the BioMix2023 competition as part of the BioMed conference in Tel Aviv.

They were asked to present innovative and applicable ideas that are not part of their current research - an innovative idea that could solve a medical problem.

Out of 30 contestants from all the universities in Israel, the top 10 were selected for the continuation of the competition, of which 2 were from the Faculty of Medicine, Orly and Aviv. Each of the selected students was given a team to work with over the next few months, with the goal of turning these ideas into a business plan.

Orly's idea is called HostDefender - gene therapy to reduce the toxicity of bone marrow transplants and increase the pool of donors.

Aviv's idea is called LacriScan - for diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases.