Supporting research projects
About research projects
The Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund is committed to improving the human condition through support of medical and scientific research.
Since the Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund’s inception in 1978, it has made substantial contributions to improving human health across the world. With the support of generous benefactors, the Fund has provided many millions of dollars in support of ground-breaking scientific and medical research across a wide range of disciplines.
These projects are an example of the work the Fund has supported.
HU Radio Astronomy Project
The Australian–Israeli collaboration initiative in the field of astrophysics
The purpose of the project, which is a joint collaboration between the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Sydney and other Australian partners is to achieve three goals:
1. A census of radio supernovae – a novel systematic study of a large sample of supernovae.
2. Tracing thermal and relativistic outflows from stars tidally disrupted by black holes.
3. Searching for gravitational wave radio counterparts – entering the multi-messenger astronomy era following the first discovery of gravitational waves from a neutron star binary merge by LIGO. It was accompanied by electromagnetic emission across the spectrum (from optical to radio) and also seen for the first time.
This project is ongoing for three years, from 2019 to 2021.
Bosch Institute
The Bosch Institute is a major centre for medical research at the University of Sydney. It brings together basic and clinical research scientists to tackle major unsolved questions about the human body in health and in illness.
Over the years, the Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund provided funding to employ an officer to establish its ‘BIO2’ facility where it runs workshops and training programs, which benefited the work of the young scientists.
Alzheimer’s Disease
In 1996, the Fund launched its Alzheimer’s Disease and Inflammation Initiative to support research aimed at finding the cause and a potential cure for the dementia of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Following this interest, in May 2008, the Trustees of the Fund announced the establishment of the Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund Alzheimer’s Disease Research Grant for a research project in the field of Alzheimer’s disease. The aim of the project was to develop and/or assess new treatments for this condition.
Among the awardees were Dr Claire Goldsbury, Brain and Mind Research Institute, University of Sydney, and Dr Karen Cullen, Discipline of Anatomy and Histology, University of Sydney, for their project entitled Energy deficiency as a cause of neuritic pathology in Alzheimer’s.
AD progressively destroys brain cells involved in memory functions. One of the diagnostic abnormalities of the damaged nerve cells is their accumulation of a protein called tau. Tau inclusions may contribute to nerve cell dysfunction by blocking trafficking of important components to synapses. Loss of synapses underlies the memory loss central to the disease. This project focuses on the process that causes the accumulation of tau. Understanding this process is important for identifying and developing new ways to treat AD.
Decline in energy metabolism, visible in AD brain scans, occurs in the same areas as damaged nerve cells. The hypothesis on which this project is based is that reduced energy metabolism in the brain initiates the accumulation of tau. Using a multi-pronged approach, this study aims to determine ways to short-circuit the pathway between energy depletion and brain damage by revealing the sequence of events that explains the abnormal accumulation of tau.
In the final project report submitted in 2012, the researchers informed that they have demonstrated that reduced energy metabolism by inhibition of mitochondrial function in cultured neurons gives rise to the redistribution of tau and cofilin into rod-like structures that appear to mimic those in the AD brain. Further, they demonstrated that the density of cofilin rods in human AD brains is significantly higher than in normal aged human brains. However, they also showed that some aged normal brains contained low levels of cofilin rods, although these brains were devoid of abnormal tau. This suggests that cofilin rod generation may be an early event in the neurodegenerative cascade representing a possible early-stage mechanism in the progression to AD dementia, and therefore an ideal future target for therapeutic intervention that might be useful in treatment of neurological diseases.
Unexpectedly, however, despite an extensive study, they were not able to show any substantial microscopic overlap of tau and cofilin in the human AD brain. They concluded that the abnormalities involving cofilin and tau probably occur in parallel in different types of brain cells. This is a significant finding as it directed future work that highlights the important role of non-neuronal cells in the mechanism of neuronal cell death in the AD brain.
Blue Sky
The Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund Blue Sky Research Grant was established in 2011 to provide seed funding for research in emerging areas, such as organ/tissue regeneration, where the investigators would use the funds to gain sufficient momentum to be competitive in larger funding systems.
One of the grants was awarded to Professor John Rasko, University of Sydney and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Dr Janet Macpherson, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and Professor Tony Weiss, University of Sydney, for a collaborative project with Professor Dan Gazit, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, entitled Characterising a unique substrate for expansion and differentiation of mesenchymal stromal cells for use in regenerative medicine.
Project outcomes
Tropoelastin has been shown to modulate biological pathways inside cells. This affects the ability of stem cells to differentiate to different mature cell types with different functions such as cartilage and bone. Through the use of tropoelastin and shorter derivatives, they demonstrated that signalling is mediated through at least two pathways: an elastin binding protein and a cell adhesion molecule or integrin.
The findings support the concept that tropoelastin participates in regulatory control, via the modulation of intracellular molecules involved in the differentiation of stem cells into mature cells that perform different functions in normal human physiology. For example, in some experimental conditions, proteins associated with the increased bone formation were altered.
This research may pave the way for better understanding of the complex crosstalk of stem cells and their matrix. Furthermore, substrates with different elasticity impacted differentiation rate toward chondrogenic (cartilage) or osteogenic (bone) lineages. Collaborations have been established to further investigate the mechanisms involved in the control of cell differentiation by substrate elasticity. Elastic substrates show great promise for the expansion of MSC for therapeutic use.
The investigators will continue to explore this technology for the future benefit of not only orthopaedic patients but those with other debilitating conditions for which the current therapeutic strategies are limited. The translation to clinical trials is essential for the future of cell therapy.
Orion Center – The Hebrew University of Jeruaslem
The Orion Center aims to stimulate and foster research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, particularly the great task of integrating the new information gained from the Scrolls into the body of knowledge about Jewish history and religion in the Second Temple period.
Such integration affects the study of the Bible, Jewish literature and thought of the Second Temple Period, earliest Christianity and the New Testament, early rabbinic Judaism, and more. The Orion Center’s bibliography of the Dead Sea Scrolls provides an essential, internationally known and used resource for Scrolls scholars.
The Sir Zelman Cowen Universities Fund grant helped run national and international workshops and symposiums over the years.
Joint Hebrew University-Australian Research Projects in Science (2022-23)
During 2021 the ZCAI launched a call for applications for scientific projects (including medical science), with a preference for projects that involved HUJI-Australian collaboration.
From an unexpectedly large number of applications, 8 projects have been selected for funding (up to AUD$150,000 each per annum over 2 years) beginning in mid-2022.
The Vice-President for International Affairs of the Hebrew University, Professor Oron Shagrir, welcomed the initiative: “We were taken by surprise, not by the quality of the applications for we know the quality of research here in Jerusalem, but by the breadth and diversity of the projects. It is a strong re-start to the long history of HUJI-Australian collaboration in science”.
According to Mr Michael Dunkel, a trustee of the SZCUF and a director of Education Heritage Foundation, who has played a leading role in this support of research and scholarship since the beginning of the SZCUF in 1978 “Israel and Australia are as far apart as nations can be, but we share challenges in medicine and agriculture and, in these projects, the safeguarding of coral reefs and the sustainable harvesting from the oceans. Several of the projects are at the forefront of medical science, dealing with human health, which is a concern in every country. The ZCAI Directors welcome this strong return of long-distance but common-problem collaborations”.
Professor Jonathan Stone, also a Director of the ZCAI noted that “There were 69 applications in total, all for joint Australian-Israeli projects in science. This indicates a huge potential for scientific cooperation, despite the distance between the two nations”.
Eventually 8 projects were selected for funding, each over two years. “We thought we might get half a dozen strong applications” said Professor Stone “We were a bit overwhelmed, but impressed, by the number and quality of what came in”.
“Perhaps” he noted “we should not have been surprised. Both Australia and Israel have coral coasts, and two projects were in marine biology in the face of climate change – understanding coral adaptation and the function of the ocean’s role in absorbing greenhouse gases. Both nations have strong agricultural sectors, and two projects were in the sustainable management of crop pests, the fruit fly and the white fly, which spoils cassava crops. And four were in the field of medicine – human health is an issue in every country”.
The medical projects were also diverse – the fundamentals of foetal development, the challenge of oropharyngeal cancer, new detectors for the next generation of X-ray-based diagnostic imagers, and new ways of understanding and tracking pandemics, to strengthen management.
Zelman Cowen Academic Initiatives has been operating for only 12 months, Mr Dunkel noted. “The success of this initiative – of joint science projects – has been a great start to our work”.