Professor Francesca Levi-Schaffer

I am an academic and researcher working as a pharmacologist and immunopharmacologist mainly in the field of allergy. I am a full Professor at the Hebrew University and the first incumbent of the Isaac and Myrna Kaye Chair in Immunopharmacology. For over 35 years I have been contributing to this field with my goal being to find drugs to prevent/treat allergy. My main objective is to identify new targets for the prophylaxis/treatment of allergic diseases and their consequences such as fibrosis and angiogenesis. I concentrate on dissecting the disease etiopathology and identifying novel pharmacological targets for its treatment by specifically studying the two main effector cells of allergy, i.e. mast cells and eosinophils. I was Chair of the Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics Department and Head of its Teaching Unit. I created the first course in immunopharmacology at the University, and I teach pharmacology to medical and pharmacy students. The IUPHAR section of Immunopharmacology was initiated by me, and as of 2022 I am President-Elect of IUPHAR. As a member of the Israeli Ministry of Health Committee for Human Experimentation of New Drugs, I serve as a pharmacology expert.