Arie Lev Gruzman (; born 3 October 1970) is a professor of chemistry at

Bar Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, , ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic university institution. It has 20,000 ...

specializing in

Medicinal Chemistry Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy involved with drug design, designing and developing pharmaceutical medication, drugs. Medicinal chemistry involves the identification, ...

Biography

Arie Lev Gruzman (1970) was born in Gorky (nowadays

Nizhniy Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət, t=Lower Newtown; colloquially shortened to Nizhny) is a city and the administrative centre of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast an ...

), Russia. He graduated (1988) from (

Summa cum Laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sout ...

) as a

practical nurse A licensed practical nurse (LPN), in much of the United States and Canada, is a nurse who provides direct nursing care for people who are sick, injured, convalescent, or disabled. In the United States, LPNs work under the direction of physician ...

. At the same year, he enrolled at the Pediatric faculty of Gorky Academy for Medicine (nowadays,

Privolzhsky Research Medical University Privolzhsky Research Medical University (Research Medical University of Volga region, , old-name: ''Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy, NNSMA'') is one of the medical schools in the Russian Federation which is located in the city of Nizhny Novg ...

). After two and a half years, he interrupted his education towards

M.D. A Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated MD, from the Latin ) is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the ''MD'' denotes a professional degree of physician. This ge ...

and repatriated to Israel in 1991. He obtained his B.Sc. in

Medicinal chemistry Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy involved with drug design, designing and developing pharmaceutical medication, drugs. Medicinal chemistry involves the identification, ...

from

Bar-Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, , ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic university institution. It has 20,000 ...

(1995) and a Ph.D. (summa cum laude) from the School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine, at

the Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. It is the second-ol ...

under the supervision of Prof. Shlomo Sasson and Prof. Jehoshua Katzehendler. After a military service in the IDF, he was a postdoctoral researcher (2004–2007) at the Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine (UCSF) and at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) at

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, under the supervision of Prof. Vishvanath Lingappa. After returning to Israel, he worked as a head of a project (development of new

antidiabetic drug Drugs used in diabetes treat types of diabetes mellitus by decreasing blood sugar level, glucose levels in the blood. With the exception of Insulin (medication), insulin, most GLP-1 receptor agonists (liraglutide, exenatide, and others), and pra ...

) at

Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. It is the second-ol ...

. Since 2009 he is a faculty member in the department of chemistry at

. Gruzman served as a vice-president of the Medicinal Chemistry Section of the Israel Chemical Society MCS-ICS (2011–2015). He is also one of the founders of the

startup A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to ...

drug development Drug development is the process of bringing a new pharmaceutical drug to the market once a lead compound has been identified through the process of drug discovery. It includes preclinical research on microorganisms and animals, filing for regu ...

company “AltA-ZuZ”.

Scientific interests and publications

His research areas of interestProf. Gruzman's lab - website
/ref> include

organic synthesis Organic synthesis is a branch of chemical synthesis concerned with the construction of organic compounds. Organic compounds are molecules consisting of combinations of covalently-linked hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms. Within the gen ...

medicinal chemistry Medicinal or pharmaceutical chemistry is a scientific discipline at the intersection of chemistry and pharmacy involved with drug design, designing and developing pharmaceutical medication, drugs. Medicinal chemistry involves the identification, ...

, peptide chemistry,

analytical chemistry Analytical skill, Analytical chemistry studies and uses instruments and methods to Separation process, separate, identify, and Quantification (science), quantify matter. In practice, separation, identification or quantification may constitute t ...

pharmacology Pharmacology is the science of drugs and medications, including a substance's origin, composition, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, therapeutic use, and toxicology. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur betwee ...

pharmacokinetics Pharmacokinetics (from Ancient Greek ''pharmakon'' "drug" and ''kinetikos'' "moving, putting in motion"; see chemical kinetics), sometimes abbreviated as PK, is a branch of pharmacology dedicated to describing how the body affects a specific su ...

studies,

in vitro ''In vitro'' (meaning ''in glass'', or ''in the glass'') Research, studies are performed with Cell (biology), cells or biological molecules outside their normal biological context. Colloquially called "test-tube experiments", these studies in ...

and

in vivo Studies that are ''in vivo'' (Latin for "within the living"; often not italicized in English) are those in which the effects of various biological entities are tested on whole, living organisms or cells, usually animals, including humans, an ...

drug candidate testing,

nanotechnology Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing propertie ...

, molecular computer-aided modeling, and basic

biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

. His current research focuses on developing of new drugs for the treatment of

insulin Insulin (, from Latin ''insula'', 'island') is a peptide hormone produced by beta cells of the pancreatic islets encoded in humans by the insulin (''INS)'' gene. It is the main Anabolism, anabolic hormone of the body. It regulates the metabol ...

dependent

diabetes mellitus Diabetes mellitus, commonly known as diabetes, is a group of common endocrine diseases characterized by sustained hyperglycemia, high blood sugar levels. Diabetes is due to either the pancreas not producing enough of the hormone insulin, or th ...

(IDDM,

Type 1 diabetes Type 1 diabetes (T1D), formerly known as juvenile diabetes, is an autoimmune disease that occurs when the body's immune system destroys pancreatic cells (beta cells). In healthy persons, beta cells produce insulin. Insulin is a hormone require ...

) and non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM,

Type 2 diabetes Type 2 diabetes (T2D), formerly known as adult-onset diabetes, is a form of diabetes mellitus that is characterized by high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and relative lack of insulin. Common symptoms include increased thirst, frequent ...

) type of diabetes. His group, together with collaborators, developed several compounds that have a bi-functional mode of action in NIDDM. Such drug candidates increase the rate of

glucose uptake Glucose uptake is the process by which glucose molecules are transported from the bloodstream into cells through specialized membrane proteins called glucose transporters, primarily via facilitated diffusion or active transport mechanisms: Faci ...

skeletal muscle Skeletal muscle (commonly referred to as muscle) is one of the three types of vertebrate muscle tissue, the others being cardiac muscle and smooth muscle. They are part of the somatic nervous system, voluntary muscular system and typically are a ...

s and augment the rate of

insulin secretion Insulin (, from Latin ''insula'', 'island') is a peptide hormone produced by beta cells of the pancreatic islets encoded in humans by the insulin (''INS)'' gene. It is the main anabolic hormone of the body. It regulates the metabolism of carb ...

. Gruzman's group also developed new drug candidates against

ALS Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neuron disease (MND) or—in the United States—Lou Gehrig's disease (LGD), is a rare, terminal neurodegenerative disorder that results in the progressive loss of both upper and low ...

. His chemistry expertise is mainly related to

peptide Peptides are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. A polypeptide is a longer, continuous, unbranched peptide chain. Polypeptides that have a molecular mass of 10,000 Da or more are called proteins. Chains of fewer than twenty am ...

peptidomimetic A peptidomimetic is a small protein-like chain designed to mimic a peptide. They typically arise either from modification of an existing peptide, or by designing similar systems that mimic peptides, such as peptoids and β-peptides. Irrespective ...

chemistry. Among his awards is Excellence in teaching (2016); “

Faculty of 1000 F1000 (formerly "Faculty of 1000") is an open research publisher for scientists, scholars, and clinical researchers. F1000 offers a different research evaluation service from standard academic journals by offering peer-review after, rather than ...

Biology Award” (2007); The Kaye Innovation Awards at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2003); Bern-Schlander Research Award, the Diabetes Research Centre of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2002). He was elected as Israeli Representative of the Chemistry and Human Health, Division of International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) for the term 2022–2023.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gruzman, Arie Lev 1970 births Living people Academic staff of Bar-Ilan University Israeli chemists Jewish chemists Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni