Hadassah International mourns the death of boxing legend Mohammed Ail, who suffered from Parkinson’s Disease. We appreciate the support the Ali family has given to research done at Hadassah on Parkinson’s disease.
The following article appeared on the Hadassah International website on August 23, 2012.
Rasheda Ali, daughter of the legendary boxer, Muhammad Ali, and a member of the advisory board of BrainStorm, the Israeli company that works on innovative treatments for Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis with Hadassah Senior Neurologist Prof. Dimitrios Karussis, will now focus her efforts on behalf of the BrainStorm/Hadassah methodology.
Ms. Ali visited the Hadassah Medical Center this summer with the managers of BrainStorm, where she met with Prof. Dimitrios Karussis, Director of Hadassah’s Multiple Sclerosis Center, and Prof. Tamir Ben-Hur, head of Neurology. The two professors described their work involving the autologous transplant of mesenchymal stem cells to treat degenerative brain diseases. They explained the importance of collaborating with the bio-tech industry–BrainStorm specifically–and what their next steps will be. Ms. Ali, an internationally known advocate for research into degenerative brain diseases, has personal experience with this debilitating decline of brain function, since her father, Muhammad, suffers from Parkinson’s.
During her visit to Hadassah, Chaim Lebovitz, President of BrainStorm, and Adrian Harel, Chief Executive Officer, took Ms. Ali to see Hadassah’s GMP (Good Manufacturing Product) research laboratory, where the collaborative work of BrainStorm and Hadassah is performed. Highly impressed with what she witnessed, Ms. Ali was glad to be able to meet the physicians behind the names she had come to know.
