Yaakov "Koby" Nahmias is an Israeli biomedical engineer and entrepreneur. Nahmias is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an affiliated member of the NIH-funded BioMEMS Resource Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Nahmias is the founding director of the Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering. He is a co-founder of Israel’s BioDesign Medical Innovation program, recently listed as a major reason for Boston Scientific's continued investment in Israel. In 2014, he won the Rappaport Prize for Biomedical Sciences for his “groundbreaking work on liver tissue engineering” and the “development of nanotechnology therapies for the treatment of diabetes”. Nahmias edited a book titled ''Microdevices in Biology and Medicine'', and is currently serving as a technology consultant for L’Oreal, and a member of the European Research Council panel for applied life sciences and

biotechnology Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used ...

. In 2018, Nahmias became the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Future Meat Technologies.

Career

Yaakov Nahmias received his B.Sc. in

Chemical Engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials int ...

and

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

from the

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology The Technion – Israel Institute of Technology ( he, הטכניון – מכון טכנולוגי לישראל) is a public research university located in Haifa, Israel. Established in 1912 under the dominion of the Ottoman Empire, the Technion ...

, graduating ''Magna Cum Laude''. He completed his PhD at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

with David Odde, and his postdoctoral training at

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...

with Martin Yarmush. In 2006, he became an independent investigator at

, winning a NIH Research Scientist Development Award (K01). Nahmias moved to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2009, where he won two major European Research Council (ERC) Starting and Consolidator Grants, and founded the Alexander Grass Center for Bioengineering. In 2010, Nahmias became a Golda Meir fellow and a member of the ERC Starting Grant panel on applied life sciences and

(LS9). In 2012, Nahmias together with Chaim Lotan, established BioDesign Israel, a multi-disciplinary program in medical innovation taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and its affiliated Hadassah Medical Center.

Research

Nahmias is a liver biologist and a biomedical engineer who took part in the development of Lodamin, the first oral, broad-spectrum angiogenesis inhibitor and the first decellularization of an intact liver for transplantation. His own work showed that the

Hepatitis C Virus The hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a small (55–65 nm in size), enveloped, positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus of the family '' Flaviviridae''. The hepatitis C virus is the cause of hepatitis C and some cancers such as liver cancer (hepatoc ...

(HCV) assembles on

VLDL Very-low-density lipoprotein (VLDL), density relative to extracellular water, is a type of lipoprotein made by the liver. VLDL is one of the five major groups of lipoproteins (chylomicrons, VLDL, intermediate-density lipoprotein, low-density lipo ...

and that its production is blocked by the grapefruit flavonoid

naringenin Naringenin is a flavorless, colorless flavanone, a type of flavonoid. It is the predominant flavanone in grapefruit, and is found in a variety of fruits and herbs. Structure Naringenin has the skeleton structure of a flavanone with three hyd ...

. Nahmias' work is leading to a growing understanding of the role of diet and nutrition on liver

metabolism Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cell ...

, including the first demonstration that gut bacteria affect liver development after birth, and explaining the toxic effects of acetaminophen using liver-on-chip technology.

Personal life

Nahmias is married to Michal Haimov, an attorney specializing in real estate and securities. The couple met at the

, are currently living in

Eden Prairie Eden Prairie is a city southwest of downtown Minneapolis in Hennepin County and the 16th-largest city in the State of Minnesota, United States. As of the 2020 census, it has a population of 64,198. The city is adjacent to the north bank of th ...

and have three children.

References

External links

MicroLiver Technologies Laboratory

PubMed citations
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nahmias, Yaakov Living people University of Minnesota alumni Harvard Medical School faculty Academic staff of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1974 births