Alexander Levitzki

Alexander Levitzki (* 1940 in Palestine) is an Israeli biochemist, known for the development of new cancer therapies.

Levitzki, son of the mathematician Jacob Levitzki, studied biochemistry at the Hebrew University (Master 's degree 1963), where he was in 1968 summa cum laude doctorate (at the Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute ). After that, he was a postdoctoral fellow until 1971 when Daniel E. Koshland at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Senior Scientist in 1970 and 1974 associate professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. In 1974 he became associate professor in 1976 and professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was a visiting professor at various universities in California (Berkeley, Stanford, San Francisco) and a visiting scientist at the NIH in Bethesda.

Levitzki is known for the development of inhibitors of various protein kinases, which are produced in certain cancers. From the drug Gleevec, Novartis (1996 ) against the leukemia - variant CML arose.

In 2005 he received the Wolf Prize in Medicine. In 1990 he was awarded the Israel Prize and the Rothschild Prize. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences.