Professor Izhak Kehat is an Attending Cardiologist in the Echo Lab in the Department of Cardiology at Rambam Health Care Campus. He also heads the Cardiovascular System Biology Lab at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the Molecular Cardiology Lab of the Clinical Research Institute at Rambam (CRIR). In addition, he is an Assistant Professor at the Technion.
Professor Kehat graduated from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine in 1997 (summa cum laude), and received his PhD from the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, studying cardiomyocytes from human embryonic stem cells, in 2005. He completed his residency in internal medicine in 2006 at Rambam, and a Fellowship in Cardiology, also at Rambam (2011). He performed post-doctoral studies under the supervision of Prof. Jeffery Molkentin at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2006-2010).
Professor Kehat’s clinical focus is on valve disease, valve calcification, heart failure and cardiomyopathies and cardiac imaging (Echo). In the research field, Dr. Kehat’s lab is studying the molecular mechanisms responsible for cardiac hypertrophy and remodeling during heart failure and in the process of valve and vascular calcification.
Selected Publications
- Abend A, Shkedi, O, Fertouk M, Caspi L, Kehat I. Salt Inducible Kinase induces cytoplasmic Histone Deacetylase 4 to promote vascular calcification. EMBO Rep. 2017 Jul;18(7):1166-1185
- Lewis YE, Moskovitz A, Mutlak M, Heineke J, Caspi LH, Kehat I. Localization of transcripts, translation, and degradation for spatiotemporal sarcomere maintenance. J Mol Cell Cardiol. 116 (2018) 16–28.
- Golan-Lagziel T, Lewis YE, Shkedi O, Douvdevany G, Caspi LH, Kehat I. Analysis of rat cardiac myocytes and fibroblasts identifies combinatorial enhancer organization and transcription factor families. J Mol Cell Cardiol. 116 (2018) 91-105.
- Mutlak M, Schlezinger-Lau M, Haas T, Shofti R, Ballan N, Lewis YE, Zuler M, Zohar Y, Casp LH, Kehat I. Extracellular signal–regulated kinase (ERK) activation preserves cardiac function in pressure overload induced hypertrophy. Int J Cardiol. 2018 (accepted).
- Kehat I, Davis J, Tiburcy M, Accornero F, Saba-El-Leil MK, Maillet M, York AJ, Lorenz JN, Zimmermann WH, Meloche S, Molkentin JD. Extracellular Signal-Regulated Kinases 1 and 2 Regulate the Balance Between Eccentric and Concentric Cardiac Growth. Circ Res. 2011 Jan 21;108(2):176-83.
- Abend A, Kehat I. Histone deacetylases as therapeutic targets - From cancer to cardiac disease. Pharmacol Ther. 2014 Nov 6
- Mutlak M, Kehat I. Extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1/2 as regulators of cardiac hypertrophy. Front Pharmacol. 2015 Jul 24;6:149.