In the academic world, Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel’s name is already well-known. Now the 33-year-old microbiologist – with a Ph.D. from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and four other postdoctoral degrees under her belt – is also being celebrated for her culinary wizardry. The mother of three (a six-year-old; and two-year-old twins) is the newest winner of the Master Chef televised cooking contest in Israel.
A type of white blood cell called a macrophage is one tricky customer. Expose macrophages to a certain stimulus and they’ll promote healing. But expose them to a different stimulus and they actually make the condition worse.
A team of Israeli researchers is making unprecedented progress in mapping the mechanism of these “good guy, bad guy” cells and understanding their role in the progression of two deadly diseases: colorectal cancer and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), an incurable lung condition.
“We identified a cell-surface receptor on the macrophages, paired immunoglobulin-like receptor B (PIR-B), that regulates their response to suppress their wound-healing capacity,” explains Ariel Munitz, a researcher in the Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology at Tel Aviv University.