Lena Neufeld | An engineer of the future

Lena Neufeld is part of a team of Israeli researchers who used cells from brain cancer patients to create a 3D printing material, a new technology.

The goal: to create a tumor model to test the effectiveness of potential treatments before using them for real on the human body.

During a recent visit to Montreal, the young woman participated in an event organized to launch a fundraising campaign that will be used to offer 50 scholarships to students at Tel Aviv University.

For the past six years, Lena Neufeld has worked with a team of scientists who have extracted “pieces” of brain tumors from patients with glioblastoma – an aggressive cancer with a very poor prognosis – and used them to print a 3D model.

Professor Ronit Satchi-Fainaro led the research of this team based at Tel Aviv University. Its core consists of five people, but they collaborate with about ten other biologists and scientific experts. Lena Neufeld took care of all the engineering of the project.

It is worth mentioning that Ronit Satchi-Fainaro is one of the world's leading cancer researchers. These experts are totally dedicated to a cause that is larger than life.

Glioblastoma is the most common form of brain cancer in adults. It spreads quickly to other parts of the brain, making it difficult to treat. The survival rate is about 40% in the first year after diagnosis and 17% in the second, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

The 3D bioprinted tumor is made from a gel composition that resembles the brain and includes a complex system of blood vessel-like tubes through which blood cells and drugs can flow, simulating how a real tumor grows and responds to treatments. The patient’s blood is then pumped through the printed tumor. While similar research has been done in the past to simulate cancer environments, this type of viable “bioprinting” is a first in the world of biomedical research. The samples, meanwhile, were taken from patients in the operating rooms of the neurosurgery department at Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital), affiliated with Tel Aviv University.

This 3D printing, which therefore imitates a living malignant tumor, makes it possible to develop new methods to improve treatment and accelerate the development of new drugs against the most deadly type of brain cancer: "This model will make it possible to test different treatments, rather than on humans or animals. 2D models already exist, but their results are very inconclusive. It was an enormous technological, biological and chemical challenge."

“You know, many cancer drugs show promising results in the laboratory, but end up failing in clinical trials. We assume that one of the main reasons is the lack of models. Worse, many that already exist are inadequate. Most models do not show the interactions between the tumor and its biological environment. Therefore, we reconstructed the tumor microenvironment.”

Marketing

Now, the team is working on creating a company that can produce this new 3D technology on a larger scale. According to Lena, the model needs to be commercially available for hospitals, university health centers, specialized clinics, etc. “Since the technology is new and unique, it is expensive. We want to help the greatest number of patients first. By creating collaborations, we can possibly reduce costs.”

"We now want to work with ten different types of cancer cells. We are getting samples from various hospitals in Israel, of course, but we would also like to get them from several other countries. This is to validate our platform, to test it so that it can be used more widely in the world of cancer. For example, we need cells from other types of cancer, including skin and pancreatic cancer."

The team must overcome two other major challenges to achieve this. First, experts must be physically on site, in the operating room, to collect samples of cancer cells during surgery. This requires the help of highly flexible specialists who can intervene at any time in Israel, but also elsewhere in the world. Second, transporting these different types of cells over long distances is crucial.

Lena's remarkable efforts

Lena Neufeld is an impressive woman. She received her Master’s degree from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, focusing on the characterization of polymers for biomedical use in the laboratory of Prof. Havatzelet Bianco-Peled. After graduation, Lena’s goal was to combine her multidisciplinary knowledge in biopolymers and chemistry with a clinical aspect.

She later joined the research group led by Professor Ronit Satchi-Fainaro at Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Medicine as a PhD student. Hats off! Since then, she has been working on the 3D printed tumor model. In fact, she is responsible for the engineering of the project.

Her team’s work has been published in Science Advances and has attracted worldwide media attention. For this project, Lena and her team won first place in the 3D-Printing Industry Awards as the Healthcare Application of the Year. A provisional patent application has been filed in the United States. In addition, Lena has given several oral presentations at international conferences. For the past three years, she has been a recipient of the Dan David Award Fellowship, which is offered to researchers working on projects with exceptional promise in science. Lena has also received the TEVA Pharmaceutical Bio-Innovation Mentorship Fellowship and participated in their one-year training project. In addition, the Israeli Academy of Sciences nominated and selected her to participate in a science communication workshop for outstanding PhD students.

It is no surprise, then, that Tel Aviv University Canada invited Lena to Montreal for an event that wanted to highlight two things: the 50th anniversary of the institution and, above all, a fundraising campaign for at least 50 scholarships ($10,000 each) over the next year.

During this event, the organizers wanted to raise awareness about the importance of financial aid for students. Of course, they also wanted to raise funds for scholarships that will be awarded to female medical students (in cancerology/oncology) at Tel Aviv University.

Born in the Soviet Union, Lena moved to Israel when she was two years old, along with her parents. This new departure coincided with the fall of the USSR.

“The goal is to encourage women in their academic journey and to demonstrate what is accomplished at Tel Aviv University. Tel Aviv University provides scholarships to students like me. During the PhD and Masters, students cannot work, except for research work at the university. So, the scholarships are extremely important. I have been a PhD student for over five years. I would not have been able to continue my studies without financial support. Tel Aviv University supported me from beginning to end, until the 3D invention was completed.”