The Hebrew University is proud to announce that Dr Netanel Loyfer, a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Yuval Dor’s lab at the Faculty of Medicine, has earned third place in the prestigious Falling Walls competition in Berlin, being named “Breakthrough of the Year” for his pioneering work, “Breaking the Wall of Cell-Free DNA.” Out of 2,500 doctoral and early-career scientists worldwide, Netanel’s innovative research, conducted with Hebrew University colleagues Prof Yuval Dor, Prof Ruth Shemer, Prof Ben Glaser and Prof Tomi Kaplan, introduces a transformative “liquid biopsy” technique that can diagnose diseases through a blood test by analysing cell-free DNA.
We are proud of Dr Netanel Loyfer, a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Yuval Dor’s lab at the Faculty of Medicine, who won a prestigious award at the Falling Walls competition in Berlin.
Out of 2,500 doctoral and early-career scientists worldwide who applied, only 100 reached the finals, and Netanel placed third, earning the title “Breakthrough of the Year” with his pitch, “Breaking the Wall of Cell-Free DNA.”
In his research, Netanel, in collaboration with the labs of Prof Yuval Dor, Prof Ruth Shemer, Prof Ben Glaser and Prof Tomi Kaplan, developed a sensitive method for performing a “liquid biopsy,” a non-invasive way to diagnose a wide range of diseases through a blood test.
Netanel shares: “We collected samples from 40 different cell types and published their full methylation signatures in Nature (Loyfer et al., 2023). Now, we ‘know the methylation code’ and can use it to determine the cellular composition of cell-free DNA in the bloodstream. For example, we can take a standard blood test from a patient, sequence it, identify the contribution of each organ, and detect abnormalities. If a blood sample shows a high number of DNA fragments originating from lung cells, this could indicate lung disease, allowing us to detect conditions such as lung cancer, pulmonary fibrosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and more.”
We believe this type of testing will transform the future of diagnostics and save countless lives!
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Picture above: Winners of the Falling Walls Science Summit, Left: Dr Netanel Loyfer