Advancing Tomorrow’s Healthcare Paradigm

Advancing Tomorrow’s Healthcare Paradigm

If yesterday’s discoveries were the result of a lone researcher in his lab, tomorrow’s will depend on collaboration and the convergence of diverse technologies. Bar-Ilan will provide the conditions for both at its new Health-Tech Valley campus.

With the emergence of AI and nanoscience and their application to biology, we are poised to push medicine past incremental interventions and toward sought-after cures. Called “bio-convergence” to describe the synergy between biotech, engineering, chemistry, computer science, and clinical practice, this novel field has the power to solve medical problems we once believed intractable.

For example, by unravelling the molecular mysteries behind deadly chronic disease, we can predict or identify its emergence much earlier and intervene at a life-saving stage. Moreover, by not just mimicking, but actively incorporating biological systems and processes, treatments can be delivered directly to their targets—safely, and with higher efficacy. And by collaborating with clinicians who bring to the task both data and experience, we can address our most pressing health challenges in the most holistic way.

Bar-Ilan research students work in the laboratory

To turn Bar-Ilan’s bio-convergence research into life-saving biotech companies, Bar-Ilan’s venture builder UnBox joined forces with Sheba Medical Center—Israel’s largest and leading hospital—in 2022. Building on the success of this partnership, which has helped launch biotech companies in fields from therapy for brain cancer to improving women’s health; and as part of the realization of the Bar-Ilan 2027 Strategic Plan, which, as President Prof. Arie Zaban explains, is designed to catalyze a “giant leap forward in research outputs,” Bar-Ilan is set to establish a new campus for its bio-convergence researchers in Ramat Gan’s forthcoming Health-Tech Valley. Occupying approximately 5,000 sqm of the complex’s main building, the campus will include wet and dry laboratories, offices, and meeting spaces for use by University researchers and their Sheba partners. There will also be a shared laboratory with 3D cell printers, printers for medical-device fabrication, imaging platforms, and more, enabling the most advanced biotech research in the Jewish state.

Finally, to ensure a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers in the fields of health and medicine, the campus will also include a dedicated floor for the University Center for Youth’s biotechnology research program.

“The bio-convergence campus represents a unique model of collaboration between a university and a hospital,” explains Bar-Ilan CEO and Senior Deputy President Zohar Yinon. “And the fact that it’s just two stops from the University’s main campus brings the full breadth of Bar-Ilan’s research talent into easy reach. I have no doubt that this project will accelerate the healthcare discoveries and innovations that can improve lives and entire societies.”