Giving Tuesday
We’re expanding our work in the fight against cancer
On this Giving Tuesday – and every day at HWI – our work is made possible through your support.
Dr. Aviv Paz, joined HWI this year from UCLA, and is leading a team to study a protein that transports both hormones and drugs throughout the body. Understanding how this works is CRITICAL to developing highly specified drugs and therapies that target cancer.
Dr. Paz’s work is just one example of the crucial research being done at HWI. Every discovery we make and share with the global community brings us one step closer to eliminating diseases – like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and cancer – that affect the people we love.
HWI’s international reputation drew Dr. Paz to move his family across the country to advance his research here in Buffalo.
Aviv Paz, PhD, an accomplished researcher with expertise in biochemistry and structural biology, joined the Institute as an associate research scientist. He and his family moved to Buffalo from California this summer, where he was a researcher at the University of California Los Angeles.
At UCLA, his work prompted collaboration with HWI’s High-Throughput Crystallization Screening Center. He and the HWI team successfully determined the structure of a protein that is abundant in Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and certain heart conditions. They published their findings for the international research community to build on. HWI sets the foundation of the research discovery pyramid.
“I am very excited to be part of this remarkable Institute. The overlap between HWI’s mission and my own vision was a motivating factor in my interest in seeking this opportunity,” said Paz. “Not only is HWI dedicated to studying the foundations of disease, it is also a world-renowned hub for structural biology and to me, these two factors are the most important. Working with medically relevant proteins poses an added value and sense of accomplishment due to the potential that the knowledge I put there could help patients.”
Paz holds a Master of Science in Biophysics from Bar-Ilan University, and earned a doctorate in structural biology from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He has published numerous studies and research papers, and contributed chapters and commentaries to multiple academic books.