Prof. Abd Al-Roof Higazi, newly appointed head of the Hadassah Medical Center’s Department of Clinical Biochemistry, joined Hadassah’s medical staff in 1986, where he and his colleagues are performing groundbreaking research that has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of strokes.

Prof. Higazi, whose particular expertise is in the area of enzymology, the study of enzymes, received his medical education and training in Barcelona, Spain.Twelve years of research at Hadassah has led Prof. Higazi and his colleagues, together with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, to develop a peptide which has proven, in animals, to stop the disastrous hemorrhaging that is a frequent side effect of the medicine used to dissolve stroke-causing blood clots. Plans are underway to begin clinical trials in humans.

In addition, Prof. Higazi is researching the interrelationship between better medical care throughout one’s lifetime and a decrease in the likelihood of developing heart disease. Those who have untreated infections during their lifetime, he hypothesizes, particularly the Arab and poorer Jewish populations, may be more susceptible to heart disease.

Prof. Higazi, who grew up in the Western Galilee village of Tamra, also teaches at the Hadassah-Hebrew University School of Medicine and at the School of Pharmacy. He is the Chief Scientific Officer of Thrombotec Ltd., a start-up venture of Hadassah’s technology transfer company, Hadasit.

For the past 16 years, Prof. Higazi has lived with his wife and three children in Neve Shalom, a Jewish-Arab village that is dedicated to coexistence. His oldest child is a student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.