BIRAX

The Parasol Foundation Trust is a longstanding supporter of The Britain Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership (BIRAX), a £10,000,000 initiative led by the British Embassy in Israel and the British Council.

BIRAX collaborates with several research organizations in Israel and in the UK and provides support to ground-breaking, joint UK-Israel research projects most recently in the field of ageing and previously in regenerative medicine.

We have supported a range of projects including two rounds of funding towards the Regenerative Research Project. Most recently, the Foundation committed additional funding towards BIRAX’s new initiative in the field of ageing.

We're funding research by Professor Tara Keck from the University College and Professor Inna Slutsky from Tel Aviv University on the ‘Failures of neuronal homeostasis in Alzheimer's Disease and ageing.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other age-related pathologies are becoming increasingly common in our ageing society, exposing a large deficit in effective treatments. Continued failures in clinical trials and the realisation that early intervention may offer better therapeutic outcomes have triggered a shift from focusing on the late-stage AD pathology to the early-stage pathophysiology.

While numerous molecular factors impaired in AD have been studied, the principle underlying the transition from ‘silent’ signatures in neural circuits to clinically measured memory decline remains unknown. Professor Keck and Professor Slutsky propose that failures in firing homeostasis in cortico-hippocampal circuits and stability-plasticity imbalance are the driving force of early disease progression.