Ritu Agarwal (Quality Improvement Core)
Dr. Agarwal is an accomplished clinician-educator with special expertise in quality care and improvement. She is the quality officer for the Division of Liver Diseases and a widely respected hepatologist, educator and mentor.
Meena Bansal (Care Standardization Core, Clinical Trials Core)
Dr. Bansal is a NIH funded investigator with a long-standing interest in studying molecular mechanisms of liver fibrosis. She has served as the Principal Investigator for numerous clinical trials for NASH, has developed a screening protocol and database for HIV patients with MASLD/MASH, and serves on a number of industry advisory boards focused on novel NASH therapeutics. As Vice-President in Population Health, she is interested in care standardization and risk stratification for the detection and treatment of MASLD/MASH across Mount Sinai’s Clinically Integrated Network.
Andrea Branch (Care Standardization Core, Clinical Trials Core)
Dr. Branch is the director of basic and translational research in the Institute of Liver Medicine. She and her colleagues, including Drs. Claudia Henschke and Li Li, developed high-quality phenotyping algorithms for primary and secondary NASH, liver cancer, and viral hepatitis; and computer algorithms for automatically diagnosing liver steatosis in chest CT scans. Her team is currently analyzing macrophage subpopulations in liver and adipose tissue of patients undergoing bariatric surgery, in collaboration with Dr. Daniel Herron.
John Bucuvalas
Population-based studies suggest nearly 1 in 4 Hispanics have MASLD. The literature suggests that about 20% of these children develop advanced fibrosis. It’s hard to say how many kids will develop hepatocellular carcinoma or require liver transplantation as they become adults but it’s not trivial. We seek to identify actionable genetic and environmental factors to mitigate risk before the kids become adults
Bishaung Cai (Molecular/Models Core)
We are interested in elucidating the mechanisms of dysregulated biosynthesis of PUFA-derived specialized pro-resolving mediators in macrophage and its consequences to MASH, hoping to identify unique resolving pathways that hold promise for future therapies to MASH.
Jaime Chu (Care Standardization Core, Molecular/Models Core)
Jaime Chu, MD is the Associate Chief of the Division of Pediatric Hepatology and Medical Director of Pediatric Liver Transplantation. The Division of Pediatric Hepatology is involved in 1) laboratory research in fibrosis in MASLD, 2) identification of genetic risk factors in pediatric obesity and MASLD, and 3) a comprehensive, family-centered, and multi-disciplinary approach in the clinical care of children and families with MASLD.
Douglas Dieterich (Care Standardization Core, Clinical Trials Core)
Dr. Dieterich is the founder and President of NASHNet, an International group dedicated to the study of MASH. He is an investigator for several ongoing studies evaluating the safety and efficacy of various antiviral treatment regimens for chronic hepatitis B & C, MASH and PSC.
Isabel Fiel (Pathology Core)
Maria Isabel Fiel, MD, is a liver pathologist with long-standing experience in the evaluation of MASLD and metabolic liver diseases. She has been active in research pertaining to alcohol and nonalcohol-associated liver injury, HCC, and liver transplant pathology. She has been a central pathologist in many clinical trials, as well as in pre-clinical and animal studies of MASH therapeutics.
Scott Friedman (Molecular/Models Core)
Dr. Friedman is a widely recognized key opinion leader who studies the pathogenesis of hepatic fibrosis in MASH and its link to liver cancer, as well as MASH therapeutic targets and their translation into novel therapies and diagnostics. In addition to NIH-supported basic research, his laboratory partners closely with biotech and pharmaceutical companies to test novel agents in unique culture systems and animal models of MASH fibrosis and liver cancer.
Noura Abul Husn (Genomics Core)
Dr. Noura Abul-Husn is the founding Chief of the Division of Genomic Medicine, Clinical Director of the Institute for Genomic Health, and Associate Professor of Medicine and Genetics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She has expertise in applying genome-first approaches to EHR-linked biobanks, which led to the discovery and characterization of a novel protein-truncating variant in HSD17B13 that protects from NASH and cirrhosis (Abul-Husn, NEJM 2018). Her current focus is to ameliorate genomic risk prediction for MASH and its progression in diverse populations.
Tatyana Kushner (Care Standardization Core)
Tatyana Kushner, MD, MSCE is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Liver Diseases with a joint appointment in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is particularly interested in the impact of MASLD/ MASH on pregnancy and adverse pregnancy outcomes, as well as women's health. She is a co-investigator of multiple MASLD clinical trials and a co-investigator in NASHNet, which focuses on defining the natural history of MASLD and identifying patients with MASLD in clinical practice.
Tae Hoon Lee
Tae Hoon Lee, MD is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Liver Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a full-time staff physician at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center (Bronx). He is a member of VHA Hepatology Field Advisory Board subcommittee in area of MASLD. He is interested in the epidemiology of MASLD and big data analysis using VA Informatics and Computing infrastructure (VINCI) to identify risk factors for MASLD progression.
Sara Lewis (Imaging Core)
Dr. Sara Lewis is a diagnostic radiologist with expertise in abdominal imaging, who is actively involved in translational research involving the characterization of hepatobiliary diseases. Specifically, she is highly interested in and engaged in research involving the investigation of multiparametric MRI methods and other quantitative imaging biomarkers of liver cancer and diffuse liver disease, such as liver steatosis and MASH.
Josep M. Llovet (Biobank/Biomarker Core, Clinical Trials Core)
Josep M Llovet, MD, PhD is Director of the Mount Sinai Liver Cancer Program and Professor of Medicine, at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Full Professor of Medicine – Hepatic Oncology at the University of Barcelona and Professor of Research ICREA-Hospital Clínic. He has devoted over 25 years of his career to study liver cancer and is a key opinion leader due to his clinical (led clinical trials of sorafenib, regorafenib, ramucirumab and chemoembolization; AASLD, EASL and ESMO guidelines) and translational achievements (molecular and immune classification of hepatocellular carcinoma, and characterization of MASH-HCC). Founder, Secretary and President of the International Liver Cancer Association (ILCA). He has been acknowledged as a top 1% scientist by Clarivate from 2014-2020, producing more 300 papers with > 80,000 citations, five out of the top-10 most cited articles in HCC globally. He received funding from NIH, DoD and European Commission grants (FP7-2010-Health, H2020).
Girish Nadkarni
Girish is the Irene and Dr. Arthur Fishberg Professor of Medicine and the Inaugural Chair of the Division of Data Driven and Digital Medicine (D3M). He is utilizing his experience with data science and electronic phenotyping to create scalable and accurate phenotyping algorithms and predictive approaches for MASH.
Thomas Schiano
Dr. Schiano has an interest in diagnosing and treating mimickers of MASH, such as certain metabolic liver diseases, as well as specializing in the care of patients having cirrhosis, those requiring liver transplantation, and in managing MASH in the post-liver transplant setting.
Bachir Taouli (Imaging Core)
Bachir Taouli, MD, MHA is Professor of Radiology and Medicine in the Abdominal Imaging/Body MRI Section in the Department of Radiology, and the BioMedical Engineering and Imaging Institute (BMEII) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. Dr. Taouli is a clinician scientist with expertise in the application of advanced MRI methods applied to diffuse liver disease and liver cancer, and has been successfully NIH funded since 2010. He directs the Body MRI quantitative group at BMEII.
Augusto Villanueva (Biobank/Biomarker Core)
Hepatologist with extensive experience in biomarker development for early detection, prognosis and treatment prediction in patients with liver cancer using tissue and blood samples. Co-Chair of the ILCA white paper on biomarker development for liver cancer, who led the enrollment of more than 450 patients in a prospective protocol to study the role of liquid biopsy for biomarker development in liver diseases.
Xiaotao Zhang (Microbiome Metabalomics Core, Statistical Core)
Dr. Xiaotao ‘Rony’ Zhang , MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Division of Gastroenterology and Institute for Translational Epidemiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Rony is an epidemiologist with expertise on nutrition, microbiome, liver disease and cancer. By merging epidemiologic methods with innovative techniques and bioinformatic/statistical strategies, his current research examines the role of biological and modifiable factors in liver fibrosis progression and MASLD related HCC. He hopes to unravel risk factors and mechanisms to inform the development of new preventive interventions and clinical strategies.