Shahar Frenkel, MD, PhD — Saving Children’s Lives and Eyes

Head of the Ocular Oncology Unit at Hadassah Medical Center

ICRF Project Grant Exploring Pediatric Eye Cancer

Who is Professor Shahar Frenkel?

Shahar Frenkel, MD, PhD is Head of the Ocular Oncology Unit at Hadassah Medical Center. He is a clinician-scientist and ocular-oncologist whose ICRF-funded research focuses on children with retinoblastoma and other rare eye cancers. He knew he wanted to be an ophthalmologist while at Hebrew University and Hadassah Medical School in an MD-PhD program. “After I started my research, I was amazed because I realized when a professor talks about something, someone worked for years for the professor to just say one sentence in a lecture.” When he’s not at work, Prof. Frenkel spends time with his wife and teenage son and daughter. He enjoys reading sci-fi, fantasy, and detective stories, swimming, and SCUBA diving. He is also a SCUBA physician.

Research Overview

Prof. Frenkel’s ICRF-funded research project, Retinoblastoma: Methylation Profile and Response to Hypoxia and Chemotherapy, focuses on developing new treatments for pediatric retinoblastoma, which is cancer of the retina, a layer in the back of the eye. Prof. Frenkel explains the retina is like the film of a camera or the CCD of the new digital cameras. He is looking to understand the unique molecular characteristics of these tumors to engineer viral-based gene therapies. He is aiming to develop a treatment that only affects the cancer cells without damaging the surrounding normal tissues. This effort, which started with treatments for eye cancers, will hopefully develop into a more general treatment for a variety of solid tumors.

What’s Trending

In ocular oncology, especially when treating children, Prof. Frenkel explains that there are three main goals. To save lives, to save eyes (even if it’s a blind eye), and to save vision. Removing the affected eye is the easiest way to cure retinoblastoma, however in his experience, most people want to preserve the eyes. Prof. Frenkel and his team save 98 percent of the lives of children with retinoblastoma if it’s local to the eye. If the cancer spreads outside of the eye, the survival rate is only 5 percent.

Reflections

Prof. Frenkel appreciates the combination of being a physician and scientist. Working with patients, especially children, makes everything worthwhile. “The most rewarding part of my work is seeing the patients’ smiles when we deliver good news to them and their parents after successful follow-up visits year after year. When they smile and say thank you, that’s extremely rewarding. It’s worth getting up in the morning for. When I see patients in the clinic, I think about how I can help them. My curiosity is what drives me. I have to find out the answers.”

Why Israel

“Here in Israel we have very intuitive people who manage to reach very high levels of science with very few resources. We improvise, we work nonstop because we’re driven, and we want to get things done. We look for cures and solutions. We’re in love with science. When we can’t get past a threshold – we find a window to crawl in through. We always try to improve things. We have a community here that is very supportive of one another.”

After October 7th, one of Prof. Frenkel’s Masters students was recruited to serve in the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza. When he returned for a brief respite, Prof. Frenkel explained that he was emotionally impacted. “He’s now back in Gaza and we are of course worried about him. When we eliminate war from this world, it will be a huge blessing.”

During Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, we hope you’ll support Israel’s cancer research — so that doctors like Prof. Frenkel can save even more lives.