Eldad Ben-Chetrit
Eldad Ben-Chetrit (born December 29, 1949) is a professor of Medicine, former Head of the Department of Medicine and former director of the Rheumatology unit (2009-2017) at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Jerusalem. He was a visiting professor at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (1996), at the Biochemistry Department, Stanford University (2004), and at the Gaslini Children Hospital (Istituto Giannina Gaslini), University of Genoa, Italy, and the Tropical Medicine Clinic, University of Heidelberg, Germany (2016). Education. Ben-Chetrit was born on December 29, 1949, in Jerusalem, Israel. He is a graduate of the  Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical School in Jerusalem. He completed a specialty and was certified by the Board in Internal Medicine in 1984. Following Internal Medicine, Ben-Chetrit was trained in Rheumatology and Immunology at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation (Scripps Research) in La Jolla, California (1986–88). In 1991, he was Board certified in Rheumatology in Israel. Research and career. Ben-Chetrit did his residency in internal medicine at the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical School and served there in many roles, up to Head of the Department. In earlier years, his main research interests included: Pathophysiology of Autoimmune diseases, i.e.  Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Sjögren's syndrome (SS) and immune-related Congenital heart block. Ben-Chetrit detected a new antigen (52 KD) component of the SSA/Ro (J Exp Med 1988) and cloned the gene encoding the 60 KD component of this antigen (J Clin Invest 1989). In collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Rheumatology at the New York University Medical Center, Ben-Chetrit investigated the relationship between the carriage of anti SSA-Ro /SSB-La antibodies in the mother and the risk for congenital heart block in the fetus or in newborns (J Clin Invest 1989). Currently, Ben -Chetrit's main research interests are the genetics, pathophysiology and therapeutic response of Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) and Behçet's disease (BD) and other autoinflammatory diseases. He has studied extensively the mechanism of action of Colchicine and its pharmacokinetics. During his work as a member of the French FMF consortium, he participated in identifying the gene associated with FMF (Nat Genet 1997). He also participated in the NIH study which discovered the association of a SNP in the gene encoding IL-10 with Behcet's disease (Nat Genet 2010). Recently, he has been a member of the steering committee of the  large trial of Canakinumab (anti IL-1 ab) for its efficacy in the treatment of several autoinflammatory diseases (NEJM 2018) and headed a committee for renaming and revising the definition of autoinflammatory diseases (Ann Rheum Dis 2018).