The Generative Brain
Tel Aviv University (Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences and Sagol School of Neuroscience) logo

Tel Aviv University (Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences and Sagol School of Neuroscience)

Tel Aviv University is a large public research university in Israel; its medical faculty, founded in 1964, was the Sackler Faculty of Medicine until 2023 and is now the Gray Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. Its prion disease relevance is indirect but real: Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center is one of its teaching hospitals, and most senior authors of the Tel Aviv E200K natural history study and its first imaging paper hold appointments in the faculty or the Sagol School of Neuroscience. The study itself is sponsored and run by the hospital, not by the university. No dedicated prion laboratory at the university was found. The university also passes on US CJD Foundation grant calls to its researchers. Information only.

Key facts

  • The medical faculty was founded in 1964; the Sackler name was removed by agreement announced on 22 June 2023, the faculty was renamed the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences in February 2024, and it took the Gray name after a 125 million US dollar gift announced on 21 May 2025 that earmarks money for neuroscience among other fields.
  • The faculty says physicians in 180 affiliated departments and institutes across 18 medical centers and HMOs hold its academic appointments, and it names Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov) as one of its clinical sites; the hospital in turn calls itself a teaching and research centre affiliated with the university's medical faculty.
  • The 2023 protocol of the Tel Aviv natural history study of preclinical genetic CJD lists the Sackler School of Medicine and the Sagol School of Neuroscience of Tel Aviv University as author affiliations alongside hospital units; the clinical work (recruitment, lumbar puncture, MRI) is described at the hospital and its Sagol Brain Institute.
  • In the March 2025 JNNP paper on white matter changes in healthy E200K carriers, 9 of 17 authors list the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences or the Sagol School of Neuroscience, including the first author, the last author Noa Bregman and Nir Giladi.
  • The study registry record names Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center as sponsor with no collaborators, so the university is an academic affiliation of the investigators rather than a formal study party.
  • The study setting is the Libyan Jewish community in Israel, about 200,000 people by the protocol's estimate and described there as the largest population at risk of E200K genetic CJD in the world; Israel has kept a national registry of genetic CJD patients since 1965.
  • Tel Aviv University affiliated clinicians have published on E200K genetic CJD since at least 1992, when a paper on peripheral nerve involvement in codon 200 patients of Libyan Jewish descent appeared with a university affiliation.
  • The university Research Authority circulated the US CJD Foundation human prion disease research grant (50,000 US dollars a year for 1 to 2 years) to its life sciences and medicine faculties for the 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026 rounds, with internal deadlines of 11 July 2024 and 10 July 2025.
  • The faculty's Aufzien Center (APPD), then directed by Nir Giladi, hosted a monthly seminar on prion science by the Zurich neuropathology head on 26 November 2020.
  • Nir Giladi was a professor in the faculty and a board member of the Sagol School; the university announced his passing on 11 December 2024.
  • The Sagol School of Neuroscience presents itself as the first neuroscience school in Israel; its public page does not mention prion disease.

Timeline

  1. 1964Medical faculty founded.
  2. 1992Tel Aviv University affiliated paper on neuropathy in codon 200 (E200K) genetic CJD published.
  3. 2020Aufzien Center seminar on prion science by the Zurich neuropathology head.
  4. 2022Start of the Tel Aviv E200K natural history study at the affiliated hospital.
  5. 2023Study protocol published with Tel Aviv University affiliations.
  6. 2023Sackler name removal from the Faculty of Medicine announced.
  7. 2024Faculty renamed Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences.
  8. 2024Research Authority posts the CJD Foundation 2024 to 2025 grant call.
  9. 2024University announces the passing of Nir Giladi.
  10. 2025JNNP E200K white matter paper published, 9 of 17 authors with university affiliations.
  11. 2025Research Authority posts the CJD Foundation 2025 to 2026 grant call.
  12. 2025Gray Foundation gift and Gray faculty name announced.
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