Dr. Rivka Ofir has been part of the Central Arava Branch of the Dead Sea & Arava Science Center for two decades. Her projects there include looking at desert plants as source for bioactive compounds. This involves High Throughput Screening (HTS) of the library of desert plant extracts against human disease models (cancer, cancer stem cells and neurodegenerative diseases). Ofir also works on screening of active extracts/compounds against whole animals-zebrafish and c. elegans models for human diseases.

In 2008, she joined the Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Her projects there include researching induced pluripotent stem cells from inherited diseases as “disease in a dish” models for studying disease mechanism and for drug discovery.

Among Rivka’s research interests: desert plants as a new source for drugs and as models for human diseases, bioprospecting, medicinal metabolites and transcript signatures in desert stress conditions.

Among Rivka’s recent publications:

Plants and fungi metabolites as novel autophagy inducers and senescence inhibitors, Exploration of Drug Science (July 2024)

Analysis of herbal medicine among Bedouin of the Saint Catherine Protectorate (southern Sinai Peninsula) and its comparison to modern drug design, Sustainable Environment (November 2023)

hiPSC-Derived Cells as Models for Drug Discovery 2.0, International Journal of Molecular Sciences (March 2023)

See here Rivka’s interview for the WEBN project.