Yona Keisari

Yona Keisari (Hebrew: יונה קיסרי; born January 10, 1947) is an Israeli immunologist, cancer researcher, and professor emeritus at the Department of Microbiology and Clinical Immunology in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Tel Aviv University. He is an expert in the field of immunology of cancerous tumors, and co-founder of the radiotherapy company "Alpha Tau Medical".

Biography Yona Keisari was born in a displaced persons camp in southern Germany, the son of Froim (Ephraim) and Miriam (née Bortman) Keyzerman, Holocaust survivors born in Bessarabia. He immigrated to Israel with his family in 1949.

After his elementary school studies he was invited to Jerusalem for the first class of the boarding school for outstanding students from around Israel, which later merged into the Mae Boyer High School. He did his military service in the Air Force.

Upon his release from the IDF in 1966, he began his studies for a master's degree in microbiology in a direct track at Tel Aviv University and completed them in 1971. Immediately after that he continued to study for a Ph.D. in this field, under the guidance of Prof. Isaac Witz. His doctoral thesis was submitted in 1976 and dealt with the study of the cancer microenvironment (tumor microenvironment).

From 1976 to 1978 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute of the United States at the NIH in Bethesda. Upon his return to Israel in 1979, he joined the faculty of the Faculty of Medicine as a lecturer. In 1983 he was appointed senior lecturer and in 1993 an associate professor. In 2002 he was appointed a full professor. Over the years he served as a visiting scientist at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and universities in Italy and Germany.

Keisari served as head of the Department of Human Microbiology from 1995 to 1997 and as head of the Department of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology from 2005 to 2007. In 2015 he retired, but continues active research at the university and mentoring research students.

Married since 1968 to Nava, they are parents of three and grandparents of ten. Keisari lives in Ramat Gan.

Research Keisari is a co-author of over 100 scientific articles and book chapters. As a faculty member at the university, he engaged in research in immunology and educated medical and graduate students in the field.

His research is devoted to two main topics: the development of treatments that destroy cancerous tumors and the activation of the immune response, and innate immunity to lung infections.

Development of treatments activating a tumor immune response

Keisari is one of the researchers who studied the potential of destroying cancerous lesions in the body in order to activate the immune response against the tumor, known as the abscopal effect.

Additional research topics Increasing the sensitivity of cancer tumor cells to alpha radiation. Confino, H., Hochman, I., Efrati, M., Schmidt, M., Umansky, V., Kelson, I., Keisari, Y. Tumor ablation by intratumoral Ra-224 loaded wires induce anti-tumor immunity against experimental metastatic tumors. Cancer Immunol. Immunother. 64:191-199; 2015. Keisari Y. Tumor abolition and antitumor immunostimulation by physico-chemical tumor ablation. Frontiers Biosc. (Landmark edition), 22: 310-347, 2017. Popovtzer, A., Rosenfeld, E., Mizrachi, A., Bellia, SR., Ben-Hur, R., Feliciani, G., Sarnelli, MA., Arazi, L., Deutch, L., Kelson, I., Keisari, Y. Initial Safety and Tumor Control Results from a “First-in-Human” Multicenter Prospective Trial Evaluating a Novel Alpha-Emitting radionuclide for the Treatment of Locally Advanced Recurrent Squamous Cell Carcinomas of the Skin and Head and Neck. Int. J. Rad. Oncol. Biol. & Phys. 2020, 106, 571-578. Keisari, Y., Kelson, I. The potentiation of anti-tumor immunity by tumor abolition with alpha particles, protons or carbon ion radiation and its enforcement by combination with immunoadjuvants or inhibitors of immune suppressor cells and check point molecules. Cells, 10, 228, 2021. Keisari, Y., Kelson, I. Tumor ablation induced anti-tumor immunity: destruction of the tumor in situ with the aim to evoke a robust anti-tumor immune response. Cancer and metastasis Reviews. Published online 11.11.2023.