Alexander Levitzki (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

: אלכסנדר לויצקי; born 13 August 1940) is an Israeli biochemist who is a professor of biochemistry at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

Birth and education

Levitzki was born in 1940 in

Palestine __NOTOC__ Palestine may refer to: * State of Palestine, a state in Western Asia * Palestine (region), a geographic region in Western Asia * Palestinian territories, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank (including East ...

. He completed his M.Sc. in chemistry from the

in Israel. He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics from the

and the

Weizmann Institute of Science The Weizmann Institute of Science ( he, מכון ויצמן למדע ''Machon Vaitzman LeMada'') is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, 14 years before the State of Israel. It differs from other Israeli unive ...

, in 1968. From 1968 to 1971, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Biochemistry,

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

in California, with Professor

Daniel E. Koshland, Jr. Daniel Edward Koshland Jr. (March 30, 1920July 23, 2007) was an American biochemist. He reorganized the study of biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the editor of the leading U.S. science journal, ''Science'', from 1985 ...

, where he worked in particular on negative cooperativity and half-of-the-sites reactivity. Contrary to the common misconception, Levitzki is not a descendant of the Hebrew Levite tribe.

Academic career

In 1970, Levitzki became a senior scientist at the Department of Biophysics, Weizmann Institute of Science. In 1974, he became an associate professor at the same institute. In 1974, he became an associate professor at the

. In 1976, he was promoted to professor of biochemistry at the

. He has been visiting scientist at the National Cancer Institute, and Fogarty International Scholar, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, visiting scholar at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, visiting professor at the University of Oregon (Eugene) and visiting professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and was the head of its science section.

Research

Levitzki is known for developing specific chemical inhibitors of cancer-induced protein kinases. He was the first to develop systematically tyrosine phosphorylation inhibitors ( tyrphostins) against a wide spectrum of protein tyrosine kinases. Levitzki demonstrated (1993) that such an inhibitor of Bcr-Abl kinase induces death of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cells. This work led to the development of Gleevec by Novartis (1996), which is currently used, with great success, for therapy of patients afflicted by this disease. Levitzki also pioneered the inhibitors of EGF receptor, PDGF receptor, Her-2/neu, Jak-2, VEGFR and peptide based cell permeable PKB/Akt inhibitors. Levitzki also showed that PDGFR kinase inhibitors (PDGFR directed tyrphostins), released from nanoparticles or from a drug eluting stent can be used to inhibit restenosis after balloon angioplasty. In 2006 his research team developed a method for inducing

brain tumor A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seconda ...

cells to "commit suicide".

Awards

In 1990, he was awarded the

Israel Prize The Israel Prize ( he, פרס ישראל; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor. History The Israel Prize is awarded annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state cer ...

, in life sciences (following in the footsteps of his father,

Jacob Levitzki Jacob Levitzki, also known as Yaakov Levitsky ( he, יעקב לויצקי) (17 August 1904 - 25 February 1956) was an Israeli mathematician. Biography Levitzki was born in 1904 in the Russian Empire and emigrated to then Ottoman-ruled Palestin ...

, who had received the prize, for exact sciences, in 1953). In 2005, he was awarded the

Wolf Prize in Medicine The Wolf Prize in Medicine is awarded annually by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics and Arts. The ...

for "pioneering signal transduction therapy and for developing tyrosine kinase inhibitors as effective agents against cancer and a range of other diseases". * I. & H. Wachter Award, I. & H. Wachter Foundation (2014)

References

External links