Sarah Ngusa, who first heard about the Technion at the age of 17, researches diseases that cause clouding of the lens of the eye as part of her doctorate
"When I was a little girl I once came home from school and said that the kids called me 'chocolate', so my mother told me that chocolate is delicious, and that was of course the right thing to say to me. This is the attitude that pushed me forward to the Technion and the doctorate, and this is the attitude that I want to instill in the youth in general and in the Ethiopian community in particular: yes, there are obstacles and there are fears, but after all fear is just fear, and the question is what one chooses to focus on. You can overcome and succeed despite everything. Try, at most you will succeed."
Sara Ngusa, born in 1988, immigrated from Ethiopia to Israel at the age of 3 and grew up in Kiryat Malachi. "I don't really remember things from Ethiopia, but I once discovered a scar on my leg and my father told me that it happened there, when I accidentally put my foot in a hot pot."
She spent her high school years at the Zvia studio in Rehovot, "because we are a believing family. It is true that I left religion in the middle of national service, but I did not stop believing in God. On the contrary, the more I delve into science, the clearer the existence of God is to me. The Big Bang happened, evolution is valid, but what is their source if not God?”
She heard about the Technion for the first time at the age of 17, when the couple of American donors Joel and Joan Cushen came to the program in which she was involved - the youth council in Kiryat Malachi. "I started speaking English with them and they told me about the Technion. Until then I had heard about colleges in the south and the universities in Beer Sheva, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem but not about the Technion. Happily, they not only encouraged me to enroll at the Technion, but also accompanied me from a personal and financial perspective on my difficult path here."
Of course, there were also concerns - "What if I don't get accepted? And if I'm not smart enough?" - But at the end of national service at the School of Arts in Jerusalem and preparatory school at the Technion, she applied and was accepted to the Faculty of Biology at the Technion. "The beginning was not easy. Not at all. I felt that I was small, that the campus was huge, that my English was bad. At first I had trouble finding a common language with the other students, but slowly I realized that everyone has the same fears and I gathered courage, I started asking questions.
"I found out that the Technion is indeed tough in the academic aspects, but very soft in every other subject, for example dormitories and tutoring. There is always someone to turn to, and the scholarships from the Aysaf and David foundations also helped a lot. So the difficulties did not disappear, but I learned to overcome each time again knowing that the goal is important enough."
At the end of her bachelor's degree, she went into industry and worked for two years at Pluristem, which develops treatments based on placenta-derived stem cells. From there she returned to the Technion for a master's degree, this time at the Faculty of Medicine - "because science has always interested me, but I wanted a closer connection to the clinical aspects of the research." In a short time, she switched to a direct track for a doctorate under the guidance of Associate Professor Robi Shalom-Feuerstein, head of the Epithelial Stem Cell Laboratory.
The laboratory team investigates the skin and cornea tissues that separate the body from its external environment. These tissues developed during evolution to protect the body from aggressive factors such as radiation, viruses and toxins. In those tissues, mechanisms of slowed cell division have developed, which prevents mutations from developing over time and producing disruptions such as a cancerous tumor.
Ngosa herself studies a microRNA molecule called miR-184. MicroRNAs are small RNA molecules that are copied from the genome and play a central role in the control of genetic expression in the living cell. miR-184, specifically, is involved in the control of epithelial cells in the skin and cornea. "Initially we focused on the effect of miR-184 in the skin and discovered how important its role is in controlling the epidermis - the outer layer of the skin made up of 4 layers. The innermost layer is the basal layer, the stem cell layer that differentiates and forms the other layers, and the layer above it is called the Spinous layer. The stem cell layer has specific mechanisms that maintain the differentiation potential of these cells, meaning they make sure that stem cells can continue to differentiate and produce the next layer. If these mechanisms work out of control, the formation of the other layers of the epidermis will be impaired. In our research, we discovered that miR-184 inhibits those mechanisms and causes the stem cells to start differentiating and building the next, more outer layers of the epidermis."
Currently, Ngusa focuses on the corneal tissue, where she also studies the miR-184 molecule. More specifically, she is investigating the role of miR-184 mutations in the formation of keratoconus and cataracts - diseases associated with deformations in the curvature of the cornea and clouding of the eye lens and can lead to blindness. To study this in mice, she will use "knockout mice" that lack the gene for miR-184, and to study this in humans, she will use blood cells that contain the mutation in miR-184. "These cells," she explains, "will undergo reprogramming - the process that earned Prof. Shinya Yamanaka and Prof. John Gordon the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2012. After we understand the mechanism of action of miR-184 in health and disease, and the molecular pathways Those affected by the disease, we can try to treat the disease by adding the same molecules affected by the mutation."
Sara, who has 5 brothers and 2 sisters, notes that "our parents always encouraged us to study, without pressure, and I loved to study anyway. They and my older sister are largely responsible for my success in breaking boundaries and overcoming fears. Thanks to them, I grew up in a kind of bubble, with the feeling that we were really financially settled - which was far from the truth. Only when I grew up and gained perspective did I realize that they simply made sure to give me the feeling that nothing was missing and that everything was possible. And that's exactly the message I want to pass on. In the end, it is not easy to grow up in Israel as an Ethiopian, and it is a fact that there are not many young people in our community who have reached a doctorate or very senior positions. This is not because of limited abilities, of course, but because of obstacles and concerns. Unfortunately, there is institutionalized and non-institutionalized racism in Israel. There is no Ethiopian who has not had an unpleasant experience with the police, especially with junior police officers, and that includes me. The question is what to do with it, how to take it and grow from it thanks to who you are."
