Haitham Amal wasn’t always propelled toward science. He wanted to study international relations; he said he liked the networking aspect of it and learning about new cultures.
Then he took physics and chemistry in high school, and he “fell in love with science,” he told JNS. More specifically, he wanted to understand the pharmacological aspects of it—how drugs worked to help people.
The trajectory seemed natural. Amal, 39, a Christian Israeli, grew up in Haifa with three siblings in a very educated family, he said, with one uncle a doctor and his sister a pharmacist.
He studied at Hebrew University of Jerusalem for four years, at Tel Aviv University for two years, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology for four years to earn his Ph.D., and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for four years of postdoctoral studies before returning to Israel. He eventually came full circle; in 2019, Amal was recruited to Hebrew University as a Neubauer assistant professor. He got tenure in three and a half years (the average is seven).
At Hebrew U, Amal heads the Amal Lab of Neuromics, Cell Signaling and Translational Medicine at the School of Pharmacy (part of the Faculty of Medicine). His research focuses on autism and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as brain cancers—subjects that not only make regular news headlines but have been linked to medical discoveries.
He is currently a visiting professor at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.
In addition to his academic work and long list of grants and honors, he co-founded two companies: Point6 Bio Ltd in Israel, which aims to develop a diagnostic tool for autism spectral disorder (ASD) based on blood and microbiome tests; and NeuroNOS in the United States, with the goal of developing a drug to treat autism and other neurological disorders.
Appreciating the amalgam of subjects he liked most in his early years, Amal calls himself “an international scientist.”
‘Great minds in Israel and America’
He spoke of all this to an audience of 100 on June 4 at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, where he was awarded a research chair in brain science from the Hebrew University, funded by the Satell Family Foundation. Amal brought his family with him: his wife, Rageda, an art therapist; his daughter Asama, 10; and his son Adam, 6.
Amal acknowledged Ed Satell—founder and chair of the Satell Family Foundation, as well as founder and CEO of the Satell Institute—as a “role model for many and my father in science.” Their relationship goes back many years; Amal was also selected for a four-year Satell MIT-Technion Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Satell, who is approaching 90, a philanthropist for more than 50 years, hosted the event with his wife, Cyma. He sat on stage to introduce Amal and to talk (biomedical) shop for a while, saying at one point that “community is everybody’s business.”
Amal spoke of encouraging advances made in autism and Alzheimer’s research. He has shown a link between nitric oxide, which is produced in human cells, and ASD; the results were widely circulated after being published in Advanced Science in May 2023.
“Important to note is that we still don’t know if [nitric oxide] leads to ASD as a first source,” said Amal in his findings. “We now know that [nitric oxide] is a major pathological factor in ASD. We also know that reducing [nitric oxide] levels reduce ASD phenotypes.”
As part of a new study, Amal’s team conducted a series of experiments using cellular and mouse models of ASD, as well as biological samples from patients, to further characterize the potential role of nitric oxide in the development of autism, according to the published paper.
The key takeaways, Amal said last week at the event, are a blood test to diagnose biomarkers of autism (clinical testing is currently the only method used) and the development of a drug—a syrup to be taken orally—that works to shut down an enzyme that produces nitric acid and thus reduces core symptoms.
He also pointed out environmental factors linked to autism, such as air pollution, chemical exposures and food toxins. To that end, Amal is part of a U.S. consortium grant awarded $17 million to investigate reasons for reported increases in autism, while focusing on how pollutants may be a key factor in both autism and Alzheimer’s.
Others who addressed the crowd that evening included businessman Joseph Neubauer, former CEO of Aramark Corporation headquartered in Philadelphia, who noted positive changes in the increasing diversity of faculty at Israeli universities; and Joshua Rednik, CEO of American Friends of the Hebrew University, who mentioned that Amal is the first international recipient of a grant from the Philadelphia Eagles Autism Foundation.
At the end of the program, a short question-and-answer period for audience members focused on what everyone wants to know: What hope lies on the horizon in terms of cures?
“Hope is in the research … and the funding,” Amal replied. And then he made it a point to add, in the backdrop of a significant revolution two-and-a-half centuries ago, “there are great minds in Israel and America that will lead to a medical revolution.”