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Personalized Medicine in Israel
The Israel National Center for Personalized Medicine (INCPM), located at the
Weizmann Institute of Science, represents a unique opportunity to build on the
foundation of excellence in genomics and bioinformatics in Israel. Its multidisci-
plinary, multi-institutional teams will conduct collaborative research that will lead
to major discoveries in the genetic and molecular basis of disease and translate them
into clinical practice. The institutes involved are:
Crown Institute for Genomics combines the innovation of the Weizmann Institute
with cutting edge industry standards and state-of-the-art DNA and RNA NGS
technologies. It aims to become more than a service provider; its goal is to com-
bine sequencing services with research and development focused at overcoming
the bottlenecks and limitations associated with assay development, automation,
and data analysis. Taken together, these capabilities will help turn the INCPM
into a unique single entity capable of partnering with researchers on all levels of
study, boosting Israel’s position in this rapidly developing fi eld of research.
de Botton Institute for Protein Profi ling (Proteomics) is ultimately geared toward
exhaustively characterizing all proteins in the human body, in health and disease.
A ‘bottom-up’ approach is used where proteins are extracted from the biological
samples, subjected to enzymatic digestion followed by liquid chromatography –
mass spectrometric analysis. Post-acquisition, the protein identity and quantity is
reconstructed using the latest bioinformatics.
Maurice and Vivienne Wohl Institute for Drug Discovery. The HTS Unit will act as
a nationally accessible central resource, open to all qualifi ed Israeli researchers
at universities, research institutes and biopharmaceutical companies, to provide
screening in support of their needs to identify research tools to support biomedi-
cal discovery and therapeutic and prophylactic molecules.
Ilana and Pascal Mantoux Institute for Bioinformatics will be providing the com-
puting power and environment required for analysis. High performance cluster
and storage array hosting various analysis and visualization tools will be made
available to all collaborating scientists.
Personalized Medicine in the Developing Countries
Poor persons in the developing countries and even in the developed countries of the
West have not benefi ted from some of the advances in modern medicine. Would
personalized medicine be applied to the economically deprived? It is unlikely that
some of the basic problems of medical care for the poor will be resolved during the
next decade to consider personalizing the medical care. If patients in Africa have
diffi culties in getting anti-HIV drugs because of the high cost, genotyping for per-
sonalizing care and overcoming drug resistance is a secondary consideration.
A concern has been expressed that as pre-emptive treatments become available, the
rich in the developing and the developed nations will consume these to avoid
20 Development of Personalized Medicine