Rivka Ofir, PhD 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.

Rivka Ofir in conversation with Galit Eilat and Rodolfo Andaur:

Part 1: Pharmaceutics of desert plants

Rivka tells Galit and Rodolfo that after receiving her PhD, she took a ten-year break as a mother and a farmer in Moshav Hazeva, in the Central Arava, in the desert of Israel. In 1998, after two postdoc positions in the USA and Australia, she joined the Research and Development Institute in Central Arava near Hazeva. There, she aimed to use desert plants and learn the desert’s wisdom to help with various disease models. Parallelly, Rivki has been having a lab in Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, and she could update and bring new methods and fields of research into the desert.

Rivki elaborated on her decades-long project of compiling a library of desert plants. “Nature is my chemist”, she says. Rivka’s originality is that she insists on creating pharmaceuticals from desert plants. She shares that it is difficult to persuade companies or investors to help make all the way to the drug. This is a wasted potential, as Rivka is certain that desert plants can help cure cancer, inhibit aging, or deescalate Alzheimer’s disease. The world of pharmaceutics dictates rules whose logic plants do not follow.

Part 2: Water management

In response to Rodolfo bringing up Chilean activist Karen Luza, who works with indigenous communities on their right to water, Rivka explains that her community in the Arava desert relies on local underground water reservoirs accessed through wells, managed by the Israeli state company “Mekorot”. She mentions that Israel is working to connect desert areas to desalination facilities, but most agriculture in her region currently depends on local water sources. Rivka also highlights the importance of community cooperation in managing water resources and surviving in the desert environment.

Part 3: Genetic modifications in desert plants

Focusing next on agricultural innovations and genetic modifications in plants and humans, Rivka explains how scientists are working to make plants salt-resistant by transferring genetic information from salt-tolerant plants to others. She also describes a cancer treatment method where a patient’s immune system is modified outside the body to recognize and fight their specific cancer cells. Galit and Rivka discuss the potential of using genetic modifications and microbiome transfers to treat various conditions, highlighting the complexity and potential of these emerging fields, ancestral practices, she says.