A Solid-Phase Approach to Accessing Bisthioether-Stapled Peptides Resulting in a Potent Inhibitor of PRC2 Catalytic Activity.

Stapled peptides have emerged as a new class of therapeutics to effectively target intractable protein-protein interactions. Thus, efficient and versatile methods granting easy access to this class of compounds and expanding the scope(s) of the currently available ones are of great interest. Now, a solid phase approach is described for the synthesis of bisthioether stapled peptides with multiple architectures, including single-turn, double-turn, and double-stapled macrocycles. This method allows for ligation with all-hydrocarbon linkers of various lengths, avoiding the use of unnatural amino acids and expensive catalysts, and affords cyclopeptides with remarkable resistance to proteolytic degradation. The potential of this procedure is demonstrated by applying it to generate a stapled peptide that shows potent in vitro inhibition of methyltransferase activity of the polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) of proteins.

[The centenary of the first medical meeting in Eretz Israel--the Trachoma Conference of 1914].

In the spring of 1914 the Jewish physicians in Eretz Israel held their first professional conference in Jerusalem. A total of 24 out of 48 doctors participated. The subject of the conference was trachoma, a common eye disease and a major cause of blindness in the Middle East. The meeting was remarkably successful in every respect and had significant influence on the merging of the Jaffa and Jerusalem physicians' societies into the Hebrew Medical Association. Thus the Trachoma Conference of 1914 became a milestone in the history of medicine in the Holy Land.

[The centenary of the Israel Medical Association].

On January 12th 1912, six Jewish physicians and one pharmacist assembled in Tel-Aviv to proclaim the founding of the Jaffa Hebrew Medical Society. One year later the Jewish doctors of Jerusalem established the "Society of Hebrew Speaking Physicians". On 28th December, 1918 a few weeks after the end of World War 1, both organizations merged into the Hebrew Medical Association which later became the Israel Medical Association (I.M.A.). The Association played a leading role in the advancement of medicine in the Holy Land and was instrumental in imposing the Hebrew medical terminology in the newly founded State of Israel.

[Dr. Kurt Steinitz (1907-1966) and the 60th anniversary of the first hemodialysis in the Middle East].

The 60th anniversary of Israel coincides with the advent of the first hemodialysis in the Middle East. It was performed by Dr. Kurt Steinitz--a Jewish immigrant from Breslau, then in Germany. After spending 9 years at the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine as a clinical biochemist, Steinitz became the director of the chemical laboratory of the Rothschild Hospital in Haifa in 1945. During the spring of 1948, he completed the construction of a hemodialysis machine according to articles published by Kolff (The Netherlands) and mainly by Alwall (Sweden). Three anuric patients underwent hemodialysis. Only the last patient survived. She was a young woman who became anuric after an operation for an extrauterine pregnancy and an incompatible blood transfusion. During the 28th and the 30th September 1948, she had three successful hemodialysis sessions and improved promptly. She lived another fifteen fruitful years. Later, Dr Steinitz' interest shifted to other medical fields, thus leaving the stage of hemodialysis to Prof. David Ullman from the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Ullman established the first nephrology unit with a regular dialysis service, becoming the pioneer of modern nephrology in Israel.

[To Russia with love: ambulances and medical equipment from Eretz Israel to the Red Army].

During the autumn of 1942 the attention of the entire world was concentrated on the decisive struggle at the Eastern Front between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. The profound sympathies of the "Yishuv" towards Russia derived not only from the common cause--the defeat of Germany but also from the Eastern European mentality, similar socialistic ideology and culture of a significant part of the immigrants. Dr. Avigdor Mandelberg, a known pulmonologist and fervent socialist was instrumental in the formation of "League V" ("Victory") which volunteered to send vital medical equipment to the Soviets. Five locally manufactured ambulances and one mobile hospital were properly decorated with Stars of David and inscriptions in Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian indicating their origin. They were delivered to the Red Army in Teheran. Finally, now more than six decades later, and in spite of the Soviet anti-Zionist policy, we have some proof that at least one ambulance reached its destination with the original Zionist insignia.