Liver Cancer Program

The Liver Cancer Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is situated in New York City, the most ethnically diverse city in the United States. The institution and program are located within Spanish Harlem, a community with a predominantly African-American and Hispanic populations, in which the incidence of HCC approaches 20-30 per 100,000, similar to that observed in high-incidence countries like China, as opposed to 5-9 cases per 100,000 in the US. Mount Sinai has developed an extensive outreach program that conducts screening and surveillance throughout our catchment area in underserved communities surrounding our institution, but also including neighborhoods with predominantly Chinese, Korean, Pakistani, and Egyptian populations.  There is a long-standing interest in liver cancer at Mount Sinai that dates to the creation of the specialty of Hepatology by Mount Sinai icons Hans Popper and Fenton Schaffner, which was accelerated greatly with the creation of the Liver Transplant Program, the first in New York State, in 1988.

The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has been at the forefront of clinical management of HCC in the United States for at least 20 years, owing in large part to the unique talents of the Hepatobiliary Surgery Unit led by Myron Schwartz, MD, along with members of the Divisions of Oncology and Liver Diseases, Pathology, and Radiology. Our institution ranks first in regional inpatient market share for HCC.  Mount Sinai Hospital is the leading center in the US in the number of new HCC patients evaluated annually, approximately 400 in 2017. This program initially earned its international reputation as a consequence of the clinical contributions made in the area of the surgical management of HCC, combined with the growth of its liver transplantation program and the burgeoning clinical and research activities of the Division of Liver Diseases, a separate Division in the Department of Medicine distinct from the Gastroenterology Division. In parallel, Josep M. Llovet MD, joined the Mount Sinai faculty in 2004 following a sabbatical at our institution and established the basis for the clinical and translational research of the program.

 

In 2015, the Tisch Cancer Institute was awarded NCI Cancer Center designation, and is the only NCI Cancer Center in the United States with a dedicated Liver Cancer Program.

The formal creation of the Mount Sinai Liver Cancer Program in April 2005, which has now been incorporated within the Tisch Cancer Institute, resulted from several key developments:

  1. The recruitment of Josep M. Llovet, MD as full-time faculty in the Division of Liver Diseases to lead the program as Research Director in 2005. He has served as Intl. Liver Cancer Assn (ILCA) President (2011-2013), Chair of the EASL-EORTC guidelines on HCC and was the Principal Investigator of the phase III trial demonstrating survival benefits from sorafenib.

  2. An internationally recognized and highly successful clinical HCC program, directed by Myron Schwartz, MD-  former member of the Governing Board of ILCA; 

  3. The outstanding reputation of Mount Sinai as a referral center for multidisciplinary management of liver cancer, with more than 3600 new cases/15 years, more than any institution in the US

  4. The support and integration with the Division of Liver Diseases led by Scott Friedman, MD, Past President of AASLD, Chief of the Division of Liver Diseases, and Dean for Therapeutic Discovery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

  5. The exceptional scientific productivity of the group with more than 270 papers in the last 10 years, including landmark studies in the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Cancer Cell, Nature Genetics and Lancet.


The NCI-funded Mount Sinai Liver Cancer Program has more than 24 active members with annual NIH funding of $8.5 million. The Liver Cancer Program is the only clinical program among the 4 programs within Mount Sinai’s NCI Cancer Center Grant.

From the outset, the HCC program has been structured as a multidisciplinary group comprising of hepatologists, surgeons, oncologists, pathologists, radiologists, genetics and genomics experts and basic scientists exploring novel models of disease, mechanisms of inflammation and signaling, fibrosis and gene therapy.

By optimizing integration of HCC efforts both within Mount Sinai and as part of an international HCC Consortium that includes investigators for leading genomics and Centers throughout the world (Dana Farber-Broad Institute-MIT, Boston; Hospital Clinic, University of Barcelona; Instituto di Tumori (Milan), the Mount Sinai Liver Cancer Program has achieved remarkable success in a relatively short time, including more than 270 publications, with international leadership of 5 clinical trials and around 10 active clinical trials on HCC and cholangiocarcinoma.

The Liver Cancer Program hosts a comprehensive educational program including monthly clinical, research and clinical trial/disease focus group meetings since 2006, during which time research updates are presented, new clinical trial prospects are discussed and research directions and priorities are consolidated. The program has also hosted an annual Postgraduate Course focused solely on Liver Cancer for 13 years with around 150 attendees, featuring lectures by both international leaders from outside institutions, as well as the full range of expertise within the program. Finally, the program hosted the First international ILCA School of Liver Cancer (Dec 2014) and created a specific Fellowship in Liver Cancer in 2017.

 

The recent publications of the members of the Liver Cancer Program team are listed below:

Celina Ang, MD, has published these recent papers

Meena Bansal, MD, has published these recent papers

Arthur Cederbaum, MD, has published these recent papers

Charissa Chang, MD, has published these recent papers

Douglas Dieterich, MD, has published these recent papers

Matthew Evans, PhD, has published these recent papers

Marcelo Facciuto, MD, has published these recent papers

Alex Federman, MD, has published these recent papers

Scott Friedman has published these recent papers

Josep Llovet, MD, has published these recent papers

Ponni Perumalswami, MD, has published these recent papers

Umut Sarpel, MD, has published these recent papers

Eric Schadt, PhD, has published these recent papers

Bachir Taouli has published these recent papers

Swan Thung, MD, has published these recent papers

Augusto Villanueva, MD, PhD has published these recent papers

Stephen Ward, MD, PhD, has published these recent papers

Josep M. Llovet, MD
Director, Liver Cancer Program
Professor of Medicine, Liver Diseases

Scott L. Friedman, MD
Director, Liver Cancer Program
Dean for Therapeutic Discovery
Chief, Division of Liver Diseases
Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics

Myron Schwartz, MD
Clinical Director, Liver Cancer Program
The Henry Kaufman Professor of Surgery
Director of Liver Surgery
Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Celina Ang, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Hematology, Medical Oncology 

Meena Bansal, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine, Liver Diseases
Director of Translational Research, Liver Diseases
Medical Director, Hospital-Based Practices

Andrea Branch, PhD
Professor of Medicine, Liver Diseases

Paolo Boffetta, MD, MPH
Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology

Arthur Cederbaum, PhD
Professor of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics

Charissa Chang, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Liver Diseases

Douglas Dieterich, MD
Professor of Medicine, Liver Diseases

Matthew Evans, PhD
Assistant Professor of Microbiology

Marcelo E. Facciuto, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Surgery 

Alex Federman, MD, MPH
Associate Professor of Medicine, General Internal Medicine

M. Isabel Fiel, MD
Professor of Pathology

Sander Florman, MD
Professor of Surgery

Ke Hao, PhD
Associate Professor, Genetics

Ponni Perumalswami, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Division of Liver Diseases
Recanati/Miller Transplant Institute

Umut Sarpel, MD
Assistant Professor of Surgery, Surgical Oncology

Eric Schadt, PhD
Professor and Chair of Genetics and Genomic Sciences
Founding Director, Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology

Daniela Sia, PhD

Max W. Sung, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology

Bachir Taouli, MD
Professor of Radiology and Medicine
Director of Body MRI
Director of Cancer Imaging Program
Department of Radiology/Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute

Swan N. Thung, MD
Professor of Pathology
Director of Liver Pathology Division

Augusto Villanueva, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Liver Diseases, Hematology and Medical Oncology

Stephen Ward, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Pathology

HCC Lab Team:

Miho Maeda, MS - Lab Coordinator
Miguel Torres-Martin, PhD
Philipp Haber, MD
Christopher Schrecker, MD
Carmen Andreu Oller

To find our clinical trials please go here: http://icahn.mssm.edu/research/clinical-trials