Emanuel Hanski
Professor Emanuel Hanski
The Hebrew University of Jerualem, Israel
During my Ph.D. and postdoctoral training, I studied signal transduction and heterotrimeric G proteins. In 1988, as independent research at the Weizmann Institute of Science, I shifted to prokaryotic research and studied the adenylate cyclase toxin of Bordetella pertussis, an essential virulence factor of whooping cough. In 1991, during a sabbatical at the Department of Molecular Microbiology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, I started studying group A streptococcus (GAS) pathogenesis. Upon returning to Israel in 1992, I joined the Faculty of Medicine of the Hebrew University School of Medicine and established a research laboratory in Microbial Pathogenesis. In 2011, I opened a satellite laboratory in Singapore within a collaborative agreement between the Hebrew University and the National University of Singapore.
Our research focuses on discovering GAS virulence mechanisms, host immune defenses and, developing novel approaches to disease therapy. We have shown that GAS induces endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and unfolded protein response (UPR) in the host by delivering streptolysin toxins. As a result, the host synthesizes and secretes asparagine utilized by GAS to upregulate its virulence and growth rate during soft tissue infections. We exploited this essential trait of pathogenesis to design novel treatments against GAS invasive infections.
https://medicine.ekmd.huji.ac.il/en/research/emanuelh/Pages/default.aspx
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