Prof Sir John Bell is President of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University. He trained in medicine in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and then at Stanford University where he developed research interests in immunology, genetics and genomics, with a particular focus on susceptibility to autoimmune diseases.

The Lord Cohen Visiting Professorship to Israel is a joint annual initiative by Hadassah UK in association with British Friends of the Hebrew University and the Jewish Medical Association UK. The Visiting Professor is selected as a leading member of the medical profession from the UK and is taken on a tour of the major medical institutions in Israel, meeting the leading doctors and researchers at those institutions. On return to the UK a keynote lecture is delivered on their  specialised subject, which can draw on their experiences and conclusions that arose from their visit to Israel.

Sir John Bell’s lecture was entitled “Personalised Medicine - when will it happen?” He introduced the subject by explaining how the study of human genetics and the genomic mapping of individual patients would enable us to match therapeutics to pathophysiology in the future. For complex diseases, where many genes are involved, the genetic mapping work is already enabling us to explore novel metabolic pathways and thus explain the way that different medicines work in different people. Sir John gave several examples of the way that recent medical developments had already had a major impact on health care. Development of anti-psychotic medicine had led to the closure of psychiatric inpatient units; biological therapies had changed the natural history of rheumatoid arthritis; and genetic and molecular studies had enabled us to ensure that only those people whose tumours will respond to Herceptin receive treatment. 

Sir John spoke warmly of his packed visit to all of Israel’s major medical institutions and his conclusions were that:

1. Israel has amazing strength in ground breaking research, despite the lack of local funding.
2. The number of centres of excellence was remarkable for such a small nation.
3. The Israeli lead in technological commercialisation in medicine and pharmaceuticals was something which the rest of the world could learn from them
4. There was a very strong commitment to translational research, from laboratory bench to patient

At Hadassah/Hebrew University he had spent an exciting morning talking to Prof Galun, who has  a special interest in gene therapy, with Prof Lichtstein about vascular genetics, and with Prof Cedar, who discovered the field of epigenetics, which may explain how the environment can play a role in regulation of genetic information.

Sir John looked to the future for two developments There need to be more – and stronger - fellowships and student exchange programmes between Israel and the UK; and based upon the number of centres of medical excellence in Israel today, he believed that it was time to create an “Israel Genomics Institute” which would ensure that the leading groups were encouraged to work more closely together. If Israel could develop such an Institute he felt they would be world leaders in this field, which he feels is the real medicine of the future.