He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry and biophysics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science, in 1968.

[5] Levitzki demonstrated (1993) that such an inhibitor of Bcr-Abl kinase induces death of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cells.

[6] This work led to the development of Gleevec by Novartis (1996), which is currently used, with great success, for therapy of patients afflicted by this disease.

[9] In 2006 his research team developed a method for inducing brain tumor cells to "commit suicide".

In 2005, he was awarded the Wolf Prize in Medicine for "pioneering signal transduction therapy and for developing tyrosine kinase inhibitors as effective agents against cancer and a range of other diseases".