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Alexander Levitzki

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Alexander Levitzki
Born (1940-08-13) 13 August 1940 (age 84)
Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine
NationalityIsraeli
Alma materHebrew University of Jerusalem
AwardsEMET Prize (2017)
Wolf Prize in Medicine (2005)
Israel Prize (1990)
Scientific career
FieldsBiochemistry
InstitutionsHebrew University of Jerusalem

Alexander Levitzki (Hebrew: אלכסנדר לויצקי; born 13 August 1940) is an Israeli biochemist who is a professor of biochemistry at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.[1][2]

Birth and education

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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., where he worked in particular on negative cooperativity and half-of-the-sites reactivity.[3] Contrary to the common misconception, Levitzki is not a descendant of the Hebrew Levite tribe.

Academic career

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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 Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1976, he was promoted to professor of biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been visiting scientist at the National Cancer Institute, and Fogarty International Scholar, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, visiting scholar at Stanford University in California, 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

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Levitzki is known for developing specific chemical inhibitors of cancer-induced protein kinases.[4] He was the first to develop systematically tyrosine phosphorylation inhibitors (tyrphostins) against a wide spectrum of protein tyrosine kinases.[5] Levitzki demonstrated (1993) that such an inhibitor of Bcr-Abl kinase induces death of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cells.[6] 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.[7] Levitzki also pioneered the inhibitors of EGF receptor, PDGF receptor, Her-2/neu, Jak-2, VEGFR and peptide based cell permeable PKB/Akt inhibitors.[8] 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.[9]

In 2006 his research team developed a method for inducing brain tumor cells to "commit suicide".[10]

Awards

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In 1990, he was awarded the Israel Prize, in life sciences[11] (following in the footsteps of his father, Jacob Levitzki, who had received the prize, for exact sciences, in 1953).

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".[12]

  • I. & H. Wachter Award, I. & H. Wachter Foundation (2014)[13]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Alexander Levitzki at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem". biolchem.huji.ac.il. Archived from the original on 2015-10-21. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  2. ^ Who's who in Israel and Jewish Personalities from All Over the World. Bronfman. 1985. Retrieved 2015-04-05.
  3. ^ Levitzki, A; Koshland, D E Jr (1976). "The role of negative cooperativity and half-of-the-sites reactivity in enzyme regulation". Current Topics in Cellular Regulation. 10: 1–40. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-152810-2.50008-5. ISBN 9780121528102. PMID 1253620.
  4. ^ Levitzki, Alexander; Klein, Shoshana (2019). "My journey from tyrosine phosphorylation inhibitors to targeted immune therapy as strategies to combat cancer". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116 (24): 11579–11586. doi:10.1073/pnas.1816012116. PMC 6575164. PMID 31076554.
  5. ^ Gazit, Aviv; Yaish, Pnina; Gilon, Chaim; Levitzki, Alexander (1989). "Tyrphostins I: Synthesis and biological activity of protein tyrosine kinase inhibitors". Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. 32 (10): 2344–2352. doi:10.1021/jm00130a020. PMID 2552117.
  6. ^ Carlo-Stella, Carmelo; Regazzi, Ester; Sammarelli, Gabriella; Colla, Simona; Garau, Daniela; Gazit, Aviv; Savoldo, Barbara; Cilloni, Daniela; Tabilio, Antonio; Levitzki, Alexander; Rizzoli, Vittorio (1999). "Effects of the Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor AG957 and an Anti-Fas Receptor Antibody on CD34+ Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia Progenitor Cells". Blood. 93 (11): 3973–3982. doi:10.1182/blood.V93.11.3973.411k12_3973_3982. PMID 10339507.
  7. ^ Levitzki, Alexander (2003). "Protein Kinase Inhibitors as a Therapeutic Modality". Accounts of Chemical Research. 36 (6): 462–469. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.570.1198. doi:10.1021/ar0201207. PMID 12809533.
  8. ^ Litman, Pninit; Ohne, Osnat; Ben-Yaakov, Shirly; Shemesh-Darvish, Liron; Yechezkel, Tamar; Salitra, Yosef; Rubnov, Shai; Cohen, Ilana; Senderowitz, Hanoch; Kidron, Dvora; Livnah, Oded; Levitzki, Alexander; Livnah, Nurit (2007). "A Novel Substrate Mimetic Inhibitor of PKB/Akt Inhibits Prostate Cancer Tumor Growth in Mice by Blocking the PKB Pathway". Biochemistry. 46 (16): 4716–4724. doi:10.1021/bi061928s. PMID 17397140.
  9. ^ Banai, Shmuel; Wolf, Yehuda; Golomb, Gershon; Pearle, Andrew; Waltenberger, Johannes; Fishbein, Ilia; Schneider, Aviva; Gazit, Aviv; Perez, Louise; Huber, Rita; Lazarovichi, Galila; Rabinovich, Laura; Levitzki, Alexander; Gertz, S. David (1998). "PDGF-Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Blocker AG1295 Selectively Attenuates Smooth Muscle Cell Growth in Vitro and Reduces Neointimal Formation After Balloon Angioplasty in Swine". Circulation. 97 (19): 1960–1969. doi:10.1161/01.CIR.97.19.1960. PMID 9609090.
  10. ^ "Killing Cancer", 'Dateline World Jewry', World Jewish Congress Foundation, December 2006/January 2007
  11. ^ "Israel Prize Official Site - Recipients in 1990 (in Hebrew)".
  12. ^ The Wolf Prize in Medicine Archived 2009-02-26 at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ "2014 – Alexander Levitzki".
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