Health Research

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport (MOST) have been cooperating in the field of health research and especially in cancer research since 1976. In 2000, following approximately 25 years of cooperation, collaboration in biotechnology was directed away from basic research and targeted towards practice-oriented projects involving Israeli research groups and German companies.

Cancer Research

The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Ministry of Science, Culture and Sport (MOST) have been cooperating in the field of cancer research since 1976 via the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg (DKFZ) and Israeli universities and research institutions.
Each joint scientific project has a duration of three years and consists of an Israeli and a DKFZ sub-project.
Research is currently focusing on genetic engineering and molecular biology.

Outstanding research: In 2005, Aaron Ciechanover of the Medical Faculty of the Technion in Haifa received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for a research topic which had partly been funded by the German-Israeli Project Cooperation (DIP) between 1999 and 2003. Together with Avraham Hershko, his Israeli doctoral thesis supervisor, and the American scientist Irvin Rose, Ciechanover discovered the role of ubiquitin in cellular protein degradation, a process which is of considerable importance in cancer research, particularly in protecting against tumours. It was the first time that Israeli researchers had received a Nobel Prize in the sciences.
The path for this research had been prepared in several German-Israeli cooperation projects. For example, the German-Israeli Foundation (GIF), the Volkswagen Foundation and inter-ministry cooperation between the BMBF and MOST provided funding for a total of four projects.

A project involving scientists at the DKFZ and Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem (1999-2002) was able to use genetically modified mast cells to identify the genetic programmes which are essential for the functioning of immune cells during inflammatory reactions, which often form the basis for the development of cancer.

Biotechnology

In 2000, following approximately 25 years of cooperation, collaboration in biotechnology was directed away from basic research and targeted towards practice-oriented projects involving Israeli research groups and German companies. This is the basis for the "German-Israeli Cooperation in Biotechnology - BIO-DISC" funding activity. The programme, which was established in 2004 in conjunction with the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS) of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor (MOITAL), supports bilateral research collaborations between German and Israeli companies which also involve research institutions from both countries. The fourth round of calls for proposals for this successful cooperation programme will be published in summer 2008.

Outstanding research: A research group consisting of scientists from the Max Planck Society and the Weizmann Institute decoded the development of resistance to antibiotics by pathological bacteria. In 2000, the academic journal Science deemed the significance of these research results to be second only to the deciphering of the human genome. 

Neurosciences

The BMBF has been funding bilateral research projects in the field of biomedicine since 1976 as part of an agreement on scientific cooperation in health research between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1998, the programme's thematic orientation was shifted from cardio-vascular to neurological research, with topics such as epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, neuronal degeneration and the molecular and cellular mechanisms of brain function. A successful exchange programme for young researchers has been in place since 2003.

Outstanding research: A team consisting of scientists from the Clinic for Epileptology of Bonn University and the Department of Physiology of the Hebrew University succeeded in identifying key mechanisms for the occurrence of attacks in the epileptic brain. 

Projects and research visits in the field of the medical sciences are funded under BMBF/MOST/MOITAL programmes as well as within the framework of the German-Israeli Project Cooperation (DIP), Minerva, the German-Israeli Foundation (GIF), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH), the German Research Association (DFG) and the Max Planck Society (MPG). Minerva Centers in specific fields of the medical sciences have been set up at various Israeli research institutions.

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