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Eagles Award Grant for Autism
Research to Israeli Professor
Jarrad Saff ren | Staff Writer
S ince 2018, the Philadelphia
Eagles’ Autism Foundation has
given out millions of dollars
in grants each year. Before 2023, all
of the recipients were based in the
United States.

But now one of those grants, worth
$400,000, is going to an Israeli profes-
sor at Hebrew University, Haitham
Amal. Amal, a pharmacologist, has
researched autism since 2015 when
he was a post-doctoral student at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He was the fi rst to show that nitric
oxide is involved in autism pathology.

His goal is to try to inhibit that with
therapeutics, he said. The grant will
allow him to hire more researchers,
expand his hypothesis and accelerate
his experiment. Within two years, he
hopes to publish two more papers on
the issue of autism and therapeutics,
he added.

The Eagles Autism Foundation is
“dedicated to raising funds for innova-
tive research and care programs,”
according to its website.

“By providing the necessary
resources to doctors and scientists at
leading institutions, we will be able
to assist those currently aff ected by
autism as well as future generations,”
the site reads.

Eagles’ owner Jeff rey Lurie, who is
Jewish, started the foundation because
he has dealt with autism in his family,
according to philadelphiaeagles.com.

“I have to say thank you to Mr. Jeff rey
Lurie, who is doing great work and
giving great eff ort to the autism fi eld,”
Amal said.

“Since launching the Eagles Autism
Challenge in 2018, we have raised
more than $20 million and funded
83 research projects and community
grants,” Lurie said in a news release
provided to the Jewish Exponent. “In
many ways, 2022 was a record-setting
year for the Eagles Autism Foundation,
but we know there is more work to be
done. We look forward to expand-
ing on our mission and assisting
even more families with the help of
SING HALLELUJAH
our community, fans, partners and
supporters.” When Amal started researching
autism eight years ago, he “fell in love,”
he said. It was a fi eld without “a lot of
pharmacology and drug development,
and this is what I am,” the professor
added. As he further explained, “I’m
a pharmacologist that knows how to
look into a disease and how to fi nd
therapeutic targets, and to treat these
targets pharmacologically.”
Amal discovered that there’s an
elevation of nitric oxide in the brain
and blood samples of autistic children,
so he started trying to fi nd thera-
peutics. He is collaborating with a
publicly-traded American company,
and he has his own startup, Point6Bio,
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Courtesy of Hebrew University
local Professor Haitham Amal
which uses blood samples from autis-
tic children and artifi cial intelligence
models to identify autism through a
sample test.

The professor fi rst applied for a
grant from the Eagles in 2021. Rachel
Sigman, the Philadelphia director
for American Friends of the Hebrew
University, had read an article in
Philadelphia Magazine about Lurie’s
new philanthropic endeavor. Sigman
knew Amal and was familiar with his
work, so she contacted to the Eagles
on his behalf. The organization invited
the Israeli to apply, but he did not make
it to the second round, according to
Sigman. But she stayed in touch with
the organization, and Amal was invited
to apply again two years later. This
time, he got it.

“I felt he’s really made tremendous
progress in the research that he’s
done,” Sigman said. “The idea of
fi nding a way to diagnose autism
using breast and blood samples
— the importance of that I thought
was going to really have a transfor-
mational eff ect in the way kids are
diagnosed. This is something that’s
going to have a positive and poten-
tially global impact.”
Amal believes the grant from the
Eagles will not only help his research
but “open the doors for collaboration
all over the world.” A small amount of
money would have allowed Amal to
investigate one mutation. But there are
hundreds of mutations in autism, and
a $400,000 grant will help the Israeli
look into diff erent ones. Experiments
and big data analyses are “expensive,”
he said.

“The goal of this grant is to under-
stand the role of nitric oxide in the
autism spectrum disorder,” he said.

“The ultimate goal of this grant is to
level up drugs and therapeutics for
treatment.” ■
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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