LEVITZKI, ALEXANDER

LEVITZKI, ALEXANDER (1940– ), Israeli biochemist. Born in Jerusalem, Levitzki received his Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute in 1968. In 1975 he joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, becoming full professor in 1976. From 1981 to 1984 he was chairman of the biological chemistry department and between 1989 and 1993 was director of the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Between 1998 and 2004 he was the director of the Institute of Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University and the Wolfson Center for Applied Structural Biology. He is one of the pioneers in the study of regulatory enzyme receptors and mechanisms of signal transduction across cell membranes, studies that led him to develop techniques for targeted destruction of cancer cells through biochemical means without harming normal cells, which is used for treatment of leukemia patients. He was the recipient of the Israel Prize for life sciences in 1990 and the Rothschild Prize for biology in 1992. In 1999 he was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of the European Society of Clinical Oncology Hamilton-Fairely award for cancer research and of the Wolf Prize for medicine in 2005. (Fern Lee Seckbach / Bracha Rager (2nd ed.)