Dr. Nagler received his medical training at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem, Israel. He then carried out a postdoctoral research fellowship in hematology and bone marrow transplantation at Stanford University Hospital, Palo Alto, CA, in the USA, from 1986 to 1990. Dr Nagler serves on the Board of Directors of the Netcord organization of cord blood banks and was the Netcord Treasurer from 2010-2013. Dr. Nagler has received several awards, including the best scientific abstract award of the ASBMT/CIBMR Tandem meeting (2004) and the best clinical abstract award of the NMDP Council Meeting (2004). In addition, Dr Nagler is a popular speaker and has made numerous, invited, international presentations and many oral presentations on almost an annual basis in all international transplantation and hematology meetings, including ASH, ASBMT/CIBMTR, EBMT, EHA, Exp Hematology (including a presentation at the presidential symposium) and an invited presentation at the Gordon conference (Boston USA). Dr. Nagler serves as the Director of the Division of Hematology, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Israel and Director of Bone Marrow transplantation and Cord Blood Bank, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Israel. He is a Professor of Medicine at the Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. Dr. Nagler is one of the pioneers of non-myeloablative and reduced intensity/toxicity allogeneic transplantations for both malignant and non-malignant disorders (Blood 1998). He established the first public cord blood bank and performed the first cord blood transplantation in Israel, and he was the leader of the alternative donor subcommittee of the ALWP of the EBMT from 2008-2010. He has also been the leader of the RIC subcommittee of the ALWP of the EBMT since 2010. Dr. Nagler serves on the Editorial Board of several BMT and Hematology Journals and is a Section Editor for Leukemia.
Dov Zipori received his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. He pursued his post-doctoral training at the National Institutes of Health (TNO), The Netherlands. Upon his return to the Weizmann Institute during the early 1980s, he pioneered studies of stroma-stem cell interactions and predicted the structure and function of stem cell niches. He spent a sabbatical year at DANX Research Institute, Palo Alto, California, before returning to the Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, where he used cellular and molecular biology tools to further the notion of the restrictive mode of tissue organization by stromal cells. He held a Professor position at this Department and was subsequently awarded the title of Director of the Helen and Martin Kimmel Institute from Stem Cell Research, at the Weizmann Institute. His most recent studies have focused on the plasticity of the mesenchymal /stromal cell phenotypes, particularly the capacity of these cells to spontaneously dedifferentiate.
Prof. Eithan Galun serves as the Director of the Goldyne Savad Gene Therapy Institute in Hadassah Medical Center (an institute of 80 investigators), and as President of the Israeli Society of Gene and Cell Therapy (ISGCT). Prof Galun is the co-founder of Silenseed and has served as the Chairman of the Scientific Board of the company from its inception. Galun is also the Chairman of the scientific board of Aptateck Ltd, a scientific advisor to MGVS Ltd, and he previously founded a number of companies. Galun wrote over 150 scientific reports and has over 15 active grants. In addition, Galun is the co-chair of the Israel Council for Higher Education, called I-Core, Israeli Centers of Research Excellence on Genomics of complex diseases. Galun is a renowned researcher in the fields of RNAi, microRNA, delivery of naked DNA, gene therapy, chronic liver diseases and cancer.
YDr. Wald completed his cardiothoracic surgical training at the Hadassah Medical Center of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Dr. Wald gained experience in the treatment of a variety of thoracic oncological problems, including lung cancer and malignant tumors of the mediastinum and chest wall. Dr. Wald is a graduate of the MD, PhD program at the Hebrew University, and his PhD thesis focused on understanding how chemokines and their receptors regulate chronic inflammatory conditions and cancer-associated inflammation. Dr. Wald is currently a junior attending surgeon at the department of cardiothoracic surgery in Hadassah, and his clinical interests are thoracic surgical oncology. Dr. Wald dedicates his research to developing novel modeling systems for early-stage thoracic malignancies and to studying the crosstalk of tumor cells with their microenvironment under these unique conditions.