The Rambam Hospital is on the (Genomic) Map
HAIFA, ISRAEL – Rambam Hospital has been selected to administer Israel’s newest nationwide competitive grants program for the advancement of clinically relevant scientific research in genomic medicine.
Mrs. Bonnie Beutler has chosen to honor the memory of her husband, distinguished clinician-scientist Prof. Ernest Beutler (1928–2008), by establishing in Israel the Ernest & Bonnie Beutler Research Program of Excellence in Genomic Medicine. Ernest Beutler is considered one of modern hematology’s fathers, and made huge contributions to the understanding of iron deficiency or iron overload, various leukemias, and Gaucher’s disease.
The selection of Rambam to administer the program attests to the hospital’s intellectual, scientific, and academic standing nationally and internationally. Rambam is ideally positioned to attain the Beutler Research Program objectives because the hospital uses systems biology approaches, is affiliated with the Technion Faculty of Medicine, and works hand-in-hand with Technion researchers in the life sciences, computer sciences, biotechnology, and related engineering disciplines.
The Beutler Research Program was formally launched at Rambam on March 6th with a festive awards ceremony followed by the first meeting of the Scientific Advisory Council (SAC). The six-member council is tasked with recruiting the best of Israel-based genomic research talent.
The SAC is chaired by Prof. Rafi Beyar, Director and CEO of Rambam Health Care Campus, and includes Professors Jacob Rowe, Yitzhak Apeloig, David Wallach, Howard Cedar and Bruce Beutler. The members of the SAC have held a range of top leadership positions at first-class medical and scientific institutions: Rambam Medical Center; the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology; the Technion’s Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Rappaport Institute; the Weizmann Institute of Science; the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the Scripps Research Institute; and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, Texas).
Prof. Rowe, who directs the Department of Hematology at Shaare Zedek Medical Center and the Institute of Hematology and Bone Marrow Transplantation at Rambam Health Care Campus, spoke of his professional and personal friendship with Ernest and Bonnie Beutler. He praised Mrs. Beutler as “a woman of valor and initiative” and her late husband as “a great scientist and clinician . . . and a superb human being.”
Prof. Bruce Beutler, a son of Ernest and Bonnie Beutler, directs the Center for Genetics of Host Defense at UT Southwestern Medical Center, and won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He was able to participate in the day’s events at Rambam via conference call. He paid tribute to his European-born grandparents, “all of whom immigrated to the U.S. to escape persecution as Jews,” and said of his parents: “They both felt unambiguously Jewish and were proud Zionists.”
The terms of the Beutler Research Program stipulate that every year for a period of five years, two separate Israel-based researchers (not necessarily medical doctors) will be awarded research grants of up to USD 500,000 each (USD 100,000 x 5 years). Several concurrent genomic medical investigations will thus receive overlapping support, with a total of ten projects to be completed within a decade. A nationwide call for applications will be issued soon.
The Ernest & Bonnie Beutler Research Program has designated nephrologist and molecular geneticist Prof. Karl Skorecki as its first grant recipient. Prof. Skorecki plans to use the generous terms of his grant to study “Functional Genomics and Chronic Kidney Disease and its Complications.” Kidney disease is a major common disease that affects at least 200 million people around the world. “We’ve identified the genetic risk locus of the disease,” he said, “and now I’m trying to understand the biological mechanisms with the aim of advancing prevention and treatment.”
Prof. Skorecki gave thanks “not only as a grant recipient but also as a member of the Israeli scientific community” to Mrs. Bonnie Beutler for originating an “imaginative and unique program to support transformative medical research in the State of Israel and in the spirit of Prof. Ernest Beutler.”
Prof. Skorecki was visibly moved by Prof. Bruce Beutler’s personal stories. “His family’s generational saga is a microcosm of the intellectual-scholarly history of the Jewish people, who have thrived and contributed to the world in the face of adversity,” he said, adding, “I deeply identify with the family.”
