Prof. Shulamit Kazav

Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Prof. Shulamit Katzav is the Bernard L. and Mary T. Sachs Professor of Cancer Studies. She earned her PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science and undertook her post-doctoral research at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, MD. Shulamit was a visiting scientist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee and an Associate Professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Since 1995, Shulamit has been a member of the Institute of Medical Research Israel-Canada (IMRIC) at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Shulamit served as the Chairs of the Research Committee of the Faculty of Medicine, Search Committee for the recruitment of young academic members (“Vaadat Sinun”), and the Department of Development Biology and Cancer Research at the Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University. She is currently charged with implementing a bold and innovative new curriculum at the Hebrew University Medical School. Shulamit’s lab focuses on the link between signal transduction and cancer, investigating a signal transducer protein, Vav, which is involved in coupling extracellular events to alterations in gene expression in the hematopoietic system. Shulamit discovered Vav when she tested DNA from five esophageal carcinomas for transforming activity. This newly identified gene represented the sixth transforming gene (oncogene) detected in the laboratory and it was designated Vav, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet. She was recently the first scientist to demonstrate that Vav plays a major role as an oncogene in human cancers such as neuroblastoma, breast and lung. Vav was also shown to be integral to the development of pancreatic cancer. This indicates that Vav can be a promising target protein in anti-tumor therapy.