A joint British-Israeli scientific collaboration in regenerative medicine has funded over £7 million in 15 bilateral research programmes in a variety of projects over the past five years, including stem cell treatments for multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease and therapies for Type 1 diabetes.
The British Council and British Embassy in Israel this week released the results of the multi-million-pound innovative programme, BIRAX (Britain Israel Research Academic Exchange). The creation of BIRAX has brought together more than 1,000 scientists, including PhD and postdoctoral students from 120 institutions, and resulted in breakthrough research published in 30 leading scientific publications.
BIRAX was launched jointly by the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Israel with the goal of bringing together world-leading scientists to advance breakthroughs in regenerative medicine. The programme has since grown into the flagship of UK-Israel science partnership, the British Council.
British Council and the Embassy announced in their statement that the programme is now the front runner in UK-Israel science partnership and since both countries are superpowers in the world of science, they can achieve more by working together.
British Ambassador to Israel David Quarrey said in the statement: “BIRAX works because it tackles some of the biggest challenges in world medicine – such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and heart disease – through genuine collaborative partnerships between world-class scientists in the UK and Israel. We are now looking at an ambitious new program for the next five years, through which we want to deepen even further the outstanding cooperation between scientists in both countries”.
