Beth Cindy Levine (April 7, 1960 – June 15, 2020) was an American

microbiologist A microbiologist (from Greek ) is a scientist who studies microscopic life forms and processes. This includes study of the growth, interactions and characteristics of microscopic organisms such as bacteria, algae, fungi, and some types of par ...

. She was an investigator at the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization headquartered in Chevy Chase, Maryland with additional facilities in Ashburn, Virginia. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American busin ...

(HHMI), Professor of Internal Medicine and Microbiology, Director of the Center for Autophagy Research and Charles Cameron Sprague Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Sciences at the

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern or UTSW) is a public academic health science center in Dallas, Texas. With approximately 23,000 employees, more than 3,000 full-time faculty, and nearly 4 million outpatient ...

. She specialized in the field of

autophagy Autophagy (or autophagocytosis; from the Greek language, Greek , , meaning "self-devouring" and , , meaning "hollow") is the natural, conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components through a lysosome-depe ...

; more specifically in its regulation and its role in diverse diseases, including

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

and

infectious diseases infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable dise ...

. Levine was described as a pioneer in the field of modern mammalian autophagy.

Biography

Beth Levine was born on April 7, 1960, in Newark, New Jersey. She grew up in New Jersey with older brothers, before graduating high school a year early. Levine died at home on June 15, 2020, from breast cancer.

Education

Beth Levine graduated magna cum laude in 1981 with a bachelor's degree in French studies from

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

. She then went on to complete her M.D. at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

Medical College, New York. She completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. While there, she published a study called "Elevated Circulating Levels of Tumor Necrosis Factor in Severe Chronic Heart Failure" with her future husband and cardiologist Dr. Milton Packer. She completed her fellowship in "infectious diseases and the pathogenesis of neurotropic viruses" at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

, Baltimore.

Career

Beth Levine served as director of virology research at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

from 1994 to 2004. She was recruited to become the chief of infectious diseases at the

from 2004 to 2011. She became the director of autophagy research in 2011. She served as a professor of internal medicine and microbiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center up until the time of her death. Levine created the Gordon Conference on Autophagy in Stress, Development, and Disease in 2003. Since 2008, she served as an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Additionally, she was elected into the American Association of Physicians and the National Academy of Sciences. In her research, Levine frequently performed cross-disciplinary experiments that opened the door to new areas for investigation. She experimented with a wide array of systems, including yeast, plant, nematode, mouse, and human. Levine discovered the first mammalian

gene,

Beclin 1 Beclin-1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''BECN1'' gene. Beclin-1 is a mammalian ortholog of the yeast autophagy-related gene 6 (Atg6) and BEC-1 in the C. elegans nematode. This protein interacts with either BCL-2 or PI3k cl ...

, and later went on to directly associate this gene with the protein

Bcl-2 Bcl-2, encoded in humans by the ''BCL2'' gene, is the founding member of the Bcl-2 family of regulator proteins. BCL2 blocks programmed cell death (apoptosis) while other BCL2 family members can either inhibit or induce it. It was the first a ...

. This association provided significant implications in the realm of cell survival. In a 1999 paper in Nature, she proposed that autophagy was linked to tumor suppression. In 2003, she confirmed the link between Beclin 1 and tumor suppression. Additionally, Levine demonstrated links between autophagy and breast cancer. She also proved a link between autophagy and viral infections, showing how the

herpes simplex virus Herpes simplex virus 1 and 2 (HSV-1 and HSV-2) are two members of the Herpesviridae#Human herpesvirus types, human ''Herpesviridae'' family, a set of viruses that produce Viral disease, viral infections in the majority of humans. Both HSV-1 a ...

type-1 expressed a protein that blocked Beclin 1 activity. She was also able to show a link between autophagy and lifespan. Levine and her team also made significant contributions in several selective fields of autophagy, including virophagy, xenophagy, and mitophagy, and she is credited for coining the term xenophagy. These contributions provided a greater understanding of the role of autophagy pathways in diseases like

neurodegeneration A neurodegenerative disease is caused by the progressive loss of neurons, in the process known as neurodegeneration. Neuronal damage may also ultimately result in their cell death, death. Neurodegenerative diseases include amyotrophic lateral sc ...

, inflammatory disorders, and cancers. Levine's lab also worked on developing therapeutics for these diseases, including Tat-Beclin, an autophagy-inducing peptide.

Awards and honours

1994 American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Award 2000 Inducted into American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) 2004 Harvey Lecture 2004 Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholars Award in Global Infectious Diseases 2006 Membership in American Association of Physicians 2008 Appointed as Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator 2008 Edith and Peter O’Donnell Award in Medicine 2012 Fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2013 Inducted into National Academy of Sciences 2013 Membership in the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas 2014 ASCI Stanley J. Korsmeyer Award 2018 Phyllis T. Bodel Women in Medicine Award from Yale University of Medicine 2018 Barcroft Medal from Queen’s University Belfast

References

External links

* http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/education/medical-school/departments/internal-medicine/centers/autophagy-research/index.html * https://web.archive.org/web/20150928212451/http://www4.utsouthwestern.edu/idlabs/Levine2011/levineIndex.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Levine, Beth American infectious disease physicians 1960 births 2020 deaths American women microbiologists 20th-century American women physicians 20th-century American physicians 21st-century American women physicians 21st-century American physicians Weill Cornell Medical College alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni Columbia University faculty Columbia Medical School faculty Howard Hughes Medical Investigators University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center faculty American cancer researchers Phage workers Brown University alumni American women academics