Ruth Itzhaki

My research topics have been diverse: iron-binding in plasma; effects of ionising radiation on natural and synthetic macromolecules; chromatin structure (I was the first to use polylysine and a nuclease to investigate this); effects of irradiation on chromatin; carcinogens and chromatin; viruses and neurological disease. More recently I have been studying Alzheimer's disease, in particular defective DNA repair, aluminium, and in most detail, the role of viruses acting with a genetic factor in dementia. For the virus work (see Research) I won an Investigator award from the Lancet, a Wellcome Trust Innovative award, two Olympus Foundation awards, an Alzheimer's Research Forum award and a Manchester City Council award. Our other research topic, which stems from the Alzheimer's disease work, is on the role of the same genetic factor in determining outcome of infection by pathogens.