Breaking the Glass Ceiling

March 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic is casting terror on the whole world. In Israel, a strict lockdown is declared, leaving most of the country’s population stuck inside their homes.

In those crazy days, Sofia Segal was in her house in the Carmel with her husband and two children, watching children’s theater on television. Glancing at an online news site, she learned that Donald Trump, the then-President of the United States, announced that he takes hydroxychloroquine in order to alleviate the symptoms in the event that he is infected with COVID-19. As a doctoral student in the Technion’s Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Sofia was curious about the research potential in using this drug and decided to evaluate integrating it in her research on cardiac pacemakers.

“Hydroxychloroquine is a drug used for treating a variety of autoimmune diseases, and it is somewhat effective against COVID-19 symptoms,” Segal explains, “but it has side effects, including slowing down the heart rate (bradycardia). As a result, it is liable to endanger COVID patients suffering from damaged physiological functioning, and especially populations considered at risk.”

Trump’s announcement intrigued Segal, whose doctoral research focuses on natural cardiac pacemakers – the tissue that provides the heart its beating rate. In her words, “There are several compartments that set the pace for the heart’s pulse. If one of these natural pacemakers is harmed, another one can cover for it – but the beating rate will change accordingly. If the damage is extensive, cardiac disorders such as cardiac insufficiency, ventricular fibrillation, atrial fibrillation and others, may develop. In our lab, we study the biological, chemical and electrical processes involved in creating the heart’s natural beating rate, and the effect of various drugs on the heart’s function.”

Segal is conducting her doctoral research under the supervision of Prof. Yael Yaniv, director of the Bioelectrical and Bioenergetic Systems Laboratory. She shared her thoughts about Trump’s hydroxychloroquine statement with Prof. Yaniv and with her colleagues in the lab. That is how the idea of an original and fascinating research project was born, which hypothesized that if a patient receives hydroxychloroquine together with a drug that increases the heart rate, they will benefit from both worlds, curbing the disease and also preserving a healthy heart rate. This project led Segal to win a prize at the Faculty Research Day that year.

From Belarus to the Carmel Mountains

Sofia Segal was born in Minsk, Belarus, and made Aliyah in 1990 with her family, when she was one year old. When she was eight, she settled in Haifa with her mother, in the Ramat Remez neighborhood adjacent to the Technion campus. “The location wasn’t a coincidence. My mother was the captain who navigated my life, and from infancy she aspired for me to study at the Technion. My whole family consists of engineers who studied at the Technikum in Russia. I received a Soviet-style education which instilled in me a sense of striving for excellence. This attitude is also visible in my athletic activities, which are an integral part of my life.”

This same Soviet-style education, says Sofia, brought her to take piano lessons from the age of five, as well as to excel in her high school Scientific track, serve in 8200 Unit in the IDF and, of course, to pursue undergraduate, master and doctoral studies at the Technion, during which she achieved numerous successes. “I believe that this Soviet education with which I grew up molded my approach according to which there is nothing that stands in the way of one’s aspirations. Everything depends on oneself, and if you want to succeed you must know – mainly – how to get up again after falling down. Without this ability, one cannot pursue a career as a scientist, since failure is an inseparable part of the process.”

Thus, choosing the Technion was an obvious choice. “As a child I was attracted to science, especially chemistry, biology and electronics, and I looked for a way to connect these fields to the world of medicine. At the Technion’s Open Day, I found my calling at the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, which became my second home during the past decade.”

Today, as an outstanding doctoral student and teaching assistant, she is herself a star at the Open Days, during which the faculty hosts young candidates who are debating what to study. “Recruiting excellent students is a big honor,” she insists, “and our efforts are bearing fruit. In my undergraduate class, there were barely 30 students in the faculty, while now there are approximately 150 in each class. The faculty invests heavily in teaching, and this is very apparent in the level of studies and the students’ overall experience.”

At the end of her undergraduate studies, Sofia met Prof. Daphne Weihs, who is a faculty member, and she told her about a new addition to the faculty – Dr. Yael Yaniv (today, Prof. Yael Yaniv). Yael joined the conversation, and the rest is history. Sofia Segal was Prof. Yaniv’s second student in the Technion lab and Segal also conducted her  PhD studies in   Yaniv’s lab. She is set to complete her doctorate this year. “Yael is a huge inspiration,” says Sofia. “She is a true professional who believes in what she does. She believes in girl power and sweeps us along with her.”

Segal’s colleagues in the lab include doctoral students Limor Arbel Ganon, whose field is pacemaker tissues in mice, Savyon Mazgaoker Samya, who researches human heart cells, and Noa Kirshner-Peretz, who studies rabbit atrial cells. “As part of our collaboration, we are developing an extensive and deep understanding of pacemaker activity and the possibilities of improving its function in the context of hydroxychloroquine use. In this research, we were able to map out the leading mechanisms for the drug’s side effects and demonstrate that using a different off-the-shelf drug cancels the slowing down of the heart rate.” They proved the efficiency of combining two drugs both in the live model and in the experiments in human cells, and these findings can be translated to clinical trials that will examine the efficacy of this combination in humans.

It’s worth noting that today, cardiac rhythm disturbances caused by damaged functioning of the natural pacemakers are treated through artificial pacemaker implants. “These pacemakers are invasive, require regular maintenance and expose the patient to various risks,” Sofia explains. In her research, she examines the possibility of rendering artificial pacemaker implants unnecessary by treating the natural pacemakers through drugs rather than in an invasive manner.

Segal’s master’s degree was devoted to developing a tissue culture technique for growing pacemaker cells in laboratory conditions. This technique proves that pacemaker cells from rabbits retain their properties in cultures by adding a material that slows down the heartbeat. “Based on this, it is possible to carry out tissue culture experiments and predict identical results in the live organism,” she explains.

“Prof. Yaniv is my supervisor, friend and sometimes like my mother,” Segal points out. “The women researchers in the lab work two complete shifts, each of which is very challenging. We are both full-time researchers in the lab and also mothers. The task of managing our families, especially bringing up our children, mainly falls on us women, and therefore we raise the banner of balancing these two jobs (do our best to balance these two jobs). For Prof. Yaniv, the family is of foremost importance, and therefore during times of crisis she encourages us to focus on our personal needs. However, it is clear to all of us that we must make up for the lost research time, and  this requires – mainly – trust.”

The family is of foremost importance to Sofia as well – meaning her husband Zohar and their two children, 6.5-year-old Tevel and 3.5-year-old Lorel. “I met Zohar when I was 18, when he joined a special unit in the army. His background is completely different from mine: he grew up in Tzfat (Safed) in a traditional family. His mother is of Moroccan descent, and his father has roots in Romania, and he has two brothers and a sister. He completed a master’s degree and several other study programs, and today is a manager in a security and business intelligence company. I believe that something about his different culture attracted him to me – the extended family, the traditions, the freedom to choose what to study and do, the food, the warmth and the friendliness. To my delight, our children are growing up in a mix of cultures and are completely blind to these cultural differences.”

Helping the elderly

In addition to her success with teaching, research and her family, she is also proud of the social project she is involved with, together with her lab partner Limor Arbel-Ganon. The two women, who are both doctoral students and young mothers, take part in volunteer activities organized with the faculty – helping the elderly in Haifa and the vicinity together with the local welfare Department. A strong friendship was born between Limor, Sofia and an elderly Holocaust survivor who escaped from Poland to Ukraine when he was five, was imprisoned in Siberia and arrived in Israel in 1948. The two women succeeded in collecting warm clothes and food for him for the winter and even cooked for him special Polish dishes that he missed so much.

Segal will soon complete 12 years of studying at the Technion, and will continue on to conquer her next goals in the biomedical industry. “Most of my years at the Technion were devoted to researching the heart using a range of research methods. I am so grateful to the Technion for being my professional home, and especially to the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering. Thanks to them, I acquired a great deal of engineering knowledge, expertise in ‘wet’ lab research, and autodidactic abilities. Moreover, I was exposed to a platform that connects science, technology and medical applications. For me, International Women’s Day is a significant milestone for all women, and especially for women in science whose work often contributes to humankind as a whole.”