Fund assists Israeli cancer researchers

If mapping the human genome was the seminal biological work of the 20th century, then learning how to “read” those genes will define this century, said one of Israel’s top cancer researchers as he tinkers in his lab surrounded by tiny plastic tubes of DNA.

“What is really important is how genes are developed,” said Howard Cedar, a U.S.-born scientist at the Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School.

Cedar recently won the prestigious Wolf Prize in Medicine — Israel’s equivalent of a Nobel Prize — for his work on how genes become active and inactive during the normal development of cells and how this process is compromised in cells that become cancerous.

He is among hundreds of Israeli scientists whose research has been supported by the