Category: News

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AUSiMED Celebrates a Decade of Impact and Honours the Lowy Family

Melbourne, February 3, 2025 – In a night of recognition, reflection, and inspiration, AUSiMED celebrated its 10-year milestone at an event hosted by the Wingate Group. The evening brought together 100 distinguished guests, including esteemed supporters, medical professionals, and advocates of AUSiMED’s mission to foster groundbreaking medical research collaborations between Australia and Israel.

At the heart of the celebration was the recognition of the Lowy family’s unwavering support for the AUSiMED Lowy Paediatric Fellowships Program. Since 2014, their contributions have played a pivotal role in fostering innovative research, developing new diagnostic tools, and enhancing healthcare delivery through Israeli-Australian collaborative projects. The profound impact of these fellowships was highlighted in speeches by AUSiMED Chair Antony Cohen and Patron Professor Les White AM, who praised the Lowy family’s dedication to advancing medical research.

Steven Lowy AM, the evening’s guest of honour, delivered a compelling speech reflecting on his family’s longstanding support for Israel and medical research collaborations. He also addressed the concerning rise of antisemitism in Australia, emphasizing the importance of unity and resilience in the face of challenges.

The event also welcomed Hon. Greg Hunt, Australia’s longest-serving Federal Member for Flinders and former Minister for Health. Hunt lauded the Lowy family’s contributions beyond the medical field, including their instrumental role in securing Australia’s successful bid to host the 2023 FIFA Women’s Soccer World Cup. He underscored the crucial need to combat terrorism and antisemitism while strengthening Australia-Israel ties through impactful medical collaborations.

“AUSiMED is a medical research partnership between Australia and Israel. It is a powerful example of how civilian cooperation and medical research collaboration can build ties between people, religions, and cultures,” said Hunt.

Reflecting on AUSiMED’s first decade, Antony Cohen emphasized the organization’s unique approach to medical research. Unlike other medical charities focused on a single disease or institution, AUSiMED identifies critical health challenges where joint Australian-Israeli efforts can make transformative breakthroughs.

“Our focus has been and continues to be on big health challenges where together Australia and Israel can make a difference in ways neither can do alone. We do this through support for knowledge exchange programs, fellowships, and research projects,” Cohen stated.

Over the past decade, AUSiMED has supported 14 medical fellows—11 of whom were sponsored by the Lowy family. These fellows have trained across 12 institutions in three Australian states and now contribute to six leading medical institutions in Israel. Their expertise spans cardiology, cystic fibrosis, neurology, ovarian cancer, and more. Some have risen to department heads, with their research influencing global medical advancements, such as genetic testing for heart defects originating from an AUSiMED-supported study at Monash University.

In addition to fellowships, AUSiMED’s research projects have tackled seven major diseases with pioneering approaches, including innovative studies in bowel cancer, ovarian cancer, and paediatric kidney disease. The organisation has also spearheaded international knowledge exchange initiatives, such as a Trauma and Mental Health Conference in Jerusalem that gathered 240 delegates from 15 countries and a COVID-19 delegation led by Professor Sharon Lewin AO.

With a decade of transformative impact and a future filled with promise, AUSiMED continues to build bridges through medical innovation, proving that collaboration knows no borders.

For more information on AUSiMED’s programs and initiatives, please contact Dr. Karen Teshuva at karen@ausimed.org.

PROTECTING PREMATURE BABIES FROM LIFELONG KIDNEY DISEASE
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PROTECTING PREMATURE BABIES FROM LIFELONG KIDNEY DISEASE

WHEN DR ALEX COMBES AND DR ODED VOLOVELSKY MET IN 2014 THEY RECOGNIZED THEY WERE A PERFECT MATCH. Both were trying to gain a better understanding of the mysteries of kidney development. But they were like two people trying to bridge a chasm from opposite ends. At Oded’s end, he had a ward full of children with kidney health concerns. His strategy was to develop a mouse model of the problem, but the tools available to him to study what was happening in the mouse kidney were limited. Alex, at the other end, was a laboratory scientist in Australia, striving to understand the dance of development: how do cells choreograph their movements to form organs? It’s a question that has mystified scientists since the time of Aristotle. Alex wanted to probe the fine-grained detail of how the organ was built at the cellular level and what instructions were driving this process. To do that, he developed some breathtaking techniques. One was the ability to see individual nephrons, the basic structure unit of the kidney, with such resolution that he was able to count them. Alex then dived in to take a look at what was going on in individual cells that were forming the nephron. Analysing thousands of them, he was able to read the genetic instructions they were following. Alex publicised his techniques in the scientific literature. Oded read the papers and saw the way to advance his research in mice. 

Soon Alex was on a plane to meet Oded in person; they began collaborating and soon made a surprising discovery. When they inactivated a single gene in Oded’s mice (called TSC-1), their pups were born with larger kidneys that carried more nephrons! Oded and Alex realized they had glimpsed the trailhead for an entirely new clinical path. Rather than treating children with existing kidney disease, they could seek to prevent it in the first place.

In Australia one in ten babies are born prematurely.

These babies are born with a major deficit in the number of nephrons in their kidneys and have a 3-5 fold increased risk of developing Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in their lifetime.

This is because the development of the kidneys – happens in the third trimester. An individual’s nephron “load” is fixed at birth – for life and we progressively lose vital nephrons over our lifetime. The earlier the birth the greater the risk.

CKD is characterised by progressive decline in kidney function and poor quality of life.

Oded and Alex now know that when they inactivated the TSC-1 gene, they removed a blockage on a set of instructions that prompt kidney development. That instruction set is called the mTOR pathway.

Odel and Alex’s proposed way forward is to try and mimic in human babies the result they saw with mice pups.  But not by inactivating a gene.  Rather, they believe they can achieve a similar effect with drugs.  They now know that when they inactivated the TSC-1 gene, they removed a gag on a set of instructions that prompt kidney development. That instruction set is called the mTOR pathway.


Dr Volovelsky and his team at Hadassah-Hebrew Uni Medical Centre

In 2023-24, recognising the power of combining the expertise and skills of these two world-leading researchers and thanks to AUSiMED’s generous donor community, AUSiMED funded the first year of a ground-breaking research collaboration between Combes lab at Monash University and the Volovesksy lab at Hadassah Hebrew University Medical Center. This funding has enabled the two teams to work together to make substantial progress in understanding the intricate relationship between prematurity and kidney development using a mouse model developed by Oded’s team, where the pups are born prematurely.

But this is just the beginning:

The next critical stages of this research collaboration are to test some of the existing drugs that have been developed to stimulate the mTOR pathway using the mouse model of prematurity and for Alex’s team to use its cutting-edge technology and expertise in advanced imaging to determine the impact of these therapies on nephron number and kidney function.

If successful, this research could lead to clinical trials to pioneer a new therapeutic strategy to hasten kidney development in premature babies.


Dr Combes and his team at Monash Uni

According toAlex, “We’ve identified a number of points that we recognise scientifically as opportunities for intervention and points of correlation with human (kidney) development and disease and, we are very well positioned because of our clinical scientific, and methological expertise to tackle the question. So, I think we are in a veryexciting place and it would be really significantscientifically and medically to continue this work.” 



For fifteen million babies born prematurely each year, a simple drug treatment at birth might one day spare a lifetime of kidney disease. 

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Sandy Benjamin OAM and Norman Same join the AUSiMED Board of Directors

We are delighted to welcome two new directors who joined the AUSiMED board in December 2024.  Sandy Benjamin OAM and Norman Same.

Sandy has degrees in psychology and Social Work and practiced for seventeen years in family psychiatry and adoption. She lectured in the social work school at La Trobe University, played a leading role in the reform of adoption law in the state of Victoria, Australia, and ran a private counselling service for people with fertility problems. She has serves as Chairman and President of the Jewish Museum of Australia and was Director of the Foundation of the National Gallery of Australia from 2007 to 2017.

Norman is a director of EQ8 Accountants with a Bachelor of Economics and a Graduate Certificate in Leadership and Organisation Dynamics. He has extensive experience working with small-to-medium sized enterprises, particularly with family businesses. He is a Chartered Tax Adviser of the Taxation Institute of Australia and an affiliate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants. He is a passionate hockey player and is currently the Finance Director of World Masters Hockey.

We look forward to the invaluable contributions Sandy and Norman will bring to our organisation.

Putting the AUS front and centre in AUSiMED
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Putting the AUS front and centre in AUSiMED

Prof Lewin AO, Ron Finkel AM and the delegation

In 2022, with COVID still high on the public health agenda, AUSiMED facilitated the visit to Israel, of fifteen of Australia’s leading Public Health experts.

Led by Professor Sharon Lewin, the Director of the Doherty Institute, the 15-person group, including the Chief Health Officers (CHO) of NSW and South Australia, the Deputy CHO of Victoria, engaged with their Israeli counterparts in a rewarding exchange of learnings from the battle with COVID-19. This was made possible by the generosity of our supporters.

A further major outcome of the Lewin mission was the connections made between the Australian delegates and their Israel counterparts in the Digital Health Innovation space.

In 2023, AUSiMED is working to strengthen these connections and facilitating exciting Digital Health initiatives with Israeli experts that will benefit Australia’s health care system.

The benefits of shared experiences are highlighted by delegation members ProfJodie McVernon, Director of Doherty Epidemiology, Doherty Institute and Dr Fergus Gardiner, Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), Director of National Emergency Response, Public Health and Research.

“We can learn from Israel about turning complex record systems into data sets that can used as ‘information for action’ by practitioners and epidemiologists.”ProfJodie McVernon

“The introduction ofgame-changing Israeli telehealth technology to facilitate remote medical examinations could result in major health benefits for Australians living with chronic diseases and people living in remote and rural communities.” Dr Fergus Gardiner

Welcoming new AUSiMED Fellow – Dr Ophir Bar-On
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Welcoming new AUSiMED Fellow – Dr Ophir Bar-On

AUSiMED is pleased to welcome Dr. Ophir Bar-On to Australia. Ophir is an outstanding paediatric respiratory disease physician and researcher, who has been working as a senior physician at the Pediatric Pulmonology Institute at Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel(Schneider) since 2014.

During his AUSiMED 12-monthLowy Paediatric Fellowship at the Respiratory Department at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, Ophir will share his clinical expertise with his counterparts at RC Hand participate in important research in the area of environmental insults on airway cilia function under the supervision of Prof. Phil Robinson, Director, Dept Respiratory and Sleep Medicine at RCH.

Prof Dario Prais, Director of the Pediatric Pulmonary Institute (PPI)at Schneider Children’s Medical Center believes that this fellowship will:

  • Enrich the institute’s expertise in the field of ciliary dyskinesia and children’s lung disease in general;
  • Prepare Ophir for taking up a more senior role at Schneider Children’s Medical Center and contribute to the future development of Schneider’s PPI;
  • Strengthen ties between these two leading paediatric respiratory departments; and
  • Benefit children with lung diseases and their carers both in Australia and Israel.

This AUSiMED Fellowship has been made possible by the generous support of the Lowy Foundation.

We wish Ophir a very fruitful and enjoyable experience in Australia.