Hermona Soreq


Hermona Soreq is an Israeli professor of Molecular Neuroscience at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Best known for her work on the signaling of acetylcholine and its relevance in stress responses and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Biography

Soreq was born in Tel-Aviv. She completed her B.Sc. in Biochemistry and Microbiology at the Hebrew University, M.Sc. in Biochemistry from Tel-Aviv University and Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Weizmann Institute in 1976. From 1977 to 1979, she was a post-doctoral Fogarty fellow, in Molecular Cell Biology, at the Rockefeller University, New York.

Scientific career

Soreq started her scientific career in the Weizmann Institute, where she served as Senior Scientist and then Associate Professor. In 1986 she became an Associate Professor of Molecular Biology in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1989 she gained her professorship there and set up her laboratory. She has run her lab there, ever-since. She served as the head of the . In 2000 she was elected as President of the , and served as such till 2002. In 2005 she was elected to serve a term of 3 years as the first female Dean of the Hebrew University's Faculty of Science
In 2011, a lab team member, Liat Benmoyal-Segal, published a paper together with Soreq indicating the relevance of a variant of the acetylcholinesterase protein in the treatment of Parkinson's. Protalix BioTherapeutics developed the variant, PRX-105, and began phase I clinical trials.
Today, Soreq is The Charlotte Schlesinger Professor of Molecular Neuroscience at the Silberman Institute for Life Sciences and a founding member of the Hebrew University’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences. Her research is focused on the mechanisms underlying malfunctioning of communication by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in muscle, nerves and blood cells, which involves changes in pre-mRNA processing and microRNA regulators, and may be manipulated by Oligonucleotide-mediated therapeutics that can be also relevant for anxiety-related, neuromuscular and neurodegenerative diseases.
She is the author of over 280 peer-reviewed journal articles and 8 books

Awards and honors

Soreq serves on the boards of the Hebrew University, the Technion and . She is also an Adjunct Research professor at the Arizona State University Biodesign Institute.
Her awards and honors include:
She has also received honorary Doctorates from the University of Erlangen, Nűremberg, Germany, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel and the University of Stockholm, Sweden,

Publications