Alexander Levitzki

Alexander Levitzki (born 1940) is an Israeli biochemist who is a Professor of Biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. [ [http://biolchem.huji.ac.il/levitzki/levitzki.html Alexander Levitzki at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem] ]

Birth and education

Alexander Levitzki was born in 1940 in Palestine. He completed his M.Sc. in Chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science, in 1968. From 1968 to 1971, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Biochemistry, University of California at Berkeley in California, with Professor Daniel E. Koshland, Jr.

Academic career

In 1970, Alexander Levitzki became a Senior Scientist at the Department of Biophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science. Then, he became an associate Professor at the same institute.

In 1976, he became an associate Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1976, he was appointed Professor of Biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been Visiting Scientist at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University in California. He is also a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Research

Alexander Levitzki is known for developing specific chemical inhibitors of cancer-induced protein kinases. He demonstrated that such an inhibitor to Bcr-Abl kinase induces death of chronic myeloid leukemia cells. This is currently used, with great success, for therapy of patients afflicted by this disease.

In 2006 his research team developed a method for inducing brain tumor cells to "commit suicide". ["Killing Cancer", 'Dateline World Jewry', World Jewish Congress Foundation, December 2006/January 2007]

In 2005, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine for "pioneering signal transduction therapy and for developing tyrosine kinase inhibitors as effective agents against cancer and a range of other diseases". [ [http://www.wolffund.org.il/cat.asp?id=24&cat_title=MEDICINE The Wolf Prize in Medicine] ]

References

External links

* [http://biolchem.huji.ac.il/levitzki/cv.html The CV of Alexander Levitzki]
* [http://www.wolffund.org.il/full.asp?id=21 The Wolf Prize in Medicine in 2005 (detail)]