Michigan-Israel Partnership for Research and Education

David J. Pinsky, M.D. is the J. Griswold Ruth and Margery Hopkins Ruth Professor of Internal Medicine, the Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine, and a Director of the University of Michigan’s Samuel and Jean Frankel Cardiovascular Center. He graduated with top honors from both the University of Toledo and theOhio State University College of Medicine, after which he moved to New York to complete residency training at Mount Sinai Hospital and cardiology and nuclear cardiology fellowships at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center. After completing research training in heart failure and vascular biology, he joined the faculty of Columbia University where he began his own research laboratory and led the cardiology research training program until his recruitment to the University of Michigan in 2003. Dr. Pinsky is an inventor on over a dozen patents, is an author of over 200 scientific papers and book chapters, and leads an active laboratory focused on understanding how natural blood vessel defense mechanisms may be amplified to protect in conditions such as stroke, heart attack, or organ transplantation. This work has led him to focus on the role of protective enzymes and biological gases such as nitric oxide and carbon monoxide which are made by blood vessel wall cells, which defend against blood flow interruption and inflammatory damage. He and his research team are studying such a defensive strategy by focussing on a family of proteins – called ectoenzymes because they are enzymes attached to the outside surface of cells. These ectoenzymes line the interior of blood vessels where they normally maintain blood flow by inhibiting both inflammation and blood clot formation. Pinsky seeks to amplify this natural defense when it is overwhelmed, such as occurs in stroke. Taubman Institute funding has supported his team’s discovery of a fundamental new mechanism by which white blood cells control their own destiny in the vicinity of a clotted vein, in a cholesterol-choked artery, in the brain, or in the heart.

Pinsky is studying how key ectoenzymes impede the formation of clots and the recruitment of white cells to damaged brain or heart tissue. His current work focuses on taking his discoveries from the test tube and genetically-engineered mice into humans, through the development of soluble enzyme therapy or through medicines which can bolster the body’s own protective enzymes. His team is also working on measuring enzyme fragments in the blood stream of humans to help detect hidden blood clots at a very early stage before they break loose and wreak havoc. Pinsky’s goal is to understand, amplify and harness a blood vessel’s natural defenses in order to develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to treat these all-too-common human afflictions.

He is an elected member of honorary scientific societies including the American Society of Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, and the Association of University Cardiologists. He has served on and chaired numerous national peer-review and strategy panels for the American Heart Association, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health, and is a popular lecturer world-wide. He currently serves asa FoundingScholar of the Taubman Medical Research Institute at the University of Michigan, an institute dedicated to supporting physician scientists and their quests to cure disease.

Prof. Avraham Levy was born in Paris, immigrating to Israel as a young man. He earned his BSc and MSc in agriculture and plant breeding at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his PhD in plant genetics from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University and at the Institut National de Recherche Agronomique in Versailles, France, after which he joined the Weizmann Institute of Science. He was Head of the Department of Plant Sciences as well asChair of the Professorial Council . He currently serves as Dean of the Faculty of Biochemistry.

In his research, Prof. Levy probes the evolutionary processes that have generated hundreds of thousands of plant species, compared to only a few thousand species of mammals. His research asks: What are the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms responsible for biodiversity in the plant kingdom?This includes mechanistic studies on hybridization, genome doubling, DNA recombination, DNA repair and genome stability as well as population genetics analyses of wheat evolution in the wild habitat. A better understand of these mechanisms might be used to improve food production, to assess evolution under climate change as well as to find alternative energy solutions. In particular, he harnesses advanced genetic manipulation techinques, such as genome editing, to engineer plants with desired features in a precise manner.

Prof. Levy coordinates a group of Israeli scientists who are working on precise genome editing in plants, and serves on the scientific board of Israeli Agro-biotech companies. He was awarded the Landau Prize of Mifal Hapais for Plant Sciences and was the recipient of an ERC grant for targeted engineering of plant genomes. He previously served as President of the Genetic Society of Israel.

Prof. Avraham Levy is the incumbent of the Gilbert de Botton Professorial Chair of Plant Sciences and he is the Director of the Y. Leon Benoziyo Institute for Molecular Medicine; and the Dr. Erhard, Emmi, and Fred Loewinsohn Center for Pediatric Health.

Prof. Levy is married and he is the father of four children.