The Outstanding Young Researcher Award of the American Heart Association - to Dr. Rabia Asala from the Technion

He is the first Israeli researcher to receive the prestigious award

Dr. Rabia Asala from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine at the Technion was selected as an outstanding young researcher by the American Heart Association. This is the first time that the prestigious award, which is given to one researcher every year, has been won by a young Israeli researcher.
Dr. Asala was born and raised in the village of Araba. He graduated with honors from medical studies at the Technion (MD/PhD, and was an outstanding president throughout his studies. He also won the Wolf Prize and the Israel Diabetes Association Prize. He is about to begin an ophthalmology residency at the Rambam Medical Center and is doing a post-doctorate in the laboratory of Professor Andrew Levy at the Faculty of Medicine Named after Rappaport at the Technion.
In the research that earned him the prestigious prize, he deeply understood the connection between a protein called haptoglobin 2-2, and heart disease among diabetics. Moreover, he even found one of the main reasons why these patients develop heart disease. "A diabetic patient who has the protein haptoglobin 2-2 tends to develop five times more heart disease than a diabetic patient who has the protein haptoglobin 1-1, which is a good protein," he explains. "In my research, I found that the protein haptoglobin 2-2 binds to the 'good' cholesterol (HDL, and lowers the anti-sclerotic and antioxidant activity of the patient, and as a result, diabetic patients with haptoglobin 2-2 have a higher tendency to develop atherosclerosis and heart attacks. We found that vitamin E treatment in the diabetic patient population with the haptoglobin 2-2 protein improves the condition by reducing the oxidative stress in the blood vessel wall, but if we find a way to inhibit this link, we will improve the patient's condition even more and we can lower the incidence of cardiac complications in these patients ".
The award will be presented to Dr. Rabia Asala at a scientific conference to be held in November in Florida, where he will present the research work for which he received this award.