At several different points early in her medical education and training, mentors pointed Laurie DeLeve, MD, PhD, FAASLD, in a particular area of research: hepatology. When she was in medical school at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in The Netherlands, Dr. DeLeve was mentored along with a small group of fellow students by an older hepatologist on the faculty.

"Mentoring is absolutely crucial. I’ve had so many good mentors and role models throughout my life."
“We decided to set up a journal club, and I ran it for four years,” says Dr. DeLeve, who is a physician-scientist doing basic science research and is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. She’s also run the journal club in her division for the past 28 years. “So I was interested in the liver early on, but I was not yet settled on it.” DeLeve instead earned a doctorate in pharmacology at the University of Toronto in Canada.

From Pharmacology to GI/Hep
“There was a guy who ran the clinical pharmacology program across the city, and during my exit interview, he said, ‘Hmm…you’re interested in drug metabolism? You should sub-specialize in hepatology after your residency,’” says Dr. DeLeve. He made a strong impression on her, so she followed his advice, and completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan, then a fellowship in gastroenterology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

“I just got really lucky with a fantastic mentor,” she says. More mentors entered her life in the second year of her residency. At the end of her GI consult month, she met with Tadataka “Tachi” Yamada, MD, KBE, who was the chief of GI at the University of Michigan and the future editor-in-chief of Yamada’s Textbook of Gastroenterology. “I was interested in research, academic medicine and the liver, and he recommended three different institutions for Gastroenterology Fellowship for my subsequent fellowship. The day after I met with Dr. Yamada, I received a phone call from Neil Kaplowitz, who was then a division chief at UCLA and would later become president of AASLD. He said, ‘I understand you are interested in research. Would you come for an extra day to tour my lab if you get a fellowship interview at UCLA?’ This was the day after I met with Dr. Yamada, and for a resident to get a call like this was totally unheard of!”

Dr. DeLeve feels that mentors can make a strong positive impact on young researchers who need guidance as they make important decisions for their training and career, and she ran a women’s mentoring group at USC for years. “Mentoring is absolutely crucial. I’ve had so many good mentors and role models throughout my life,” she says.

Focus on Microcirculation
With Dr. Kaplowitz as her mentor, Dr. DeLeve focused her research on liver microcirculation, with an early emphasis on toxic liver injury. She spends about one third of her time on administrative work and mentoring tenure-track faculty, including an intense, structured program she instituted that includes ample time for feedback and questions between the mentor and mentee, and regular check-ins by the mentor to find out what the mentee may need. In 2015, DeLeve received the USC/Mellon Mentoring Award for Faculty Mentoring Faculty.

“In this day and age, when funding for research is tight, a lot of young doctors are finishing their training with a lot of debt. It’s hard to recruit doctors to go into research when they have so much debt,” she says. “Research disciplines thrive when both PhD scientists and physician-scientists are working in a given field, because they each have different strengths. Physician-scientists may have better insight in clinical relevance, whereas PhDs may be better grounded in advanced methodology. When we work together, research moves forward more effectively. It’s crucial to make sure that young scientists are well mentored. If you’ve never written a grant before, having your grant reviewed by an experienced mentor first helps. We didn’t have a formal mentoring program at USC before I came here, so this is very gratifying for me. It’s one of my proudest achievements.”

AASLD Involvement
During Dr. Kaplowitz’ tenure as AASLD President, Dr. DeLeve joined the Education Committee. From both Dr. Kaplowitz and another of her mentors, the committee’s chair and later AASLD President, Keith Lindor, she learned various administrative “soft” skills.

“I learned a lot about how to run a meeting, and I had a fantastic time. Three years later, Dr. Lindor recommended me to become the next chair of the committee. I love everyone I work with at AASLD, including the staff, who are very fun people to work with,” she says. “It’s fun and rewarding, and it’s my home away from home. At the Member’s Reception at the Annual Meeting, I get more hugs than I do the rest of the year combined!” She became a Fellow of the AASLD in 2014.

At home in Los Angeles, Dr. DeLeve says her life away from campus rotates around her daughter and her two dogs, a border terrier and a bichon frisé. She enjoys regular workouts, wine and spending time with her many friends.

“I spend about four hours every weekend walking my dogs,” she says. “I’m known as a grill master also. My gas grill is only steps from the kitchen door. We have two seasons here in Southern California: summer and ski season. I love skiing and snowboarding, but my knees do not – I’ve had two crunched menisci. So no more skiing. Now, it’s scuba diving when I travel.”

Carla W. Brady, MD, MHS, FAASLD is an Associate Professor in the Division of Gastroenterology at Duke University Medical Center, having been a faculty member within the division since 2006 and having served as an elected member of the Duke University Executive Committee of Academic Council and as an appointed member of the trustee-led Graduate and Professional Education and Research Committee.  She is a transplant hepatologist with a particular interest in liver disease and liver transplantation from a women's health perspective.  Dr. Brady has authored various manuscripts on liver disease in pregnancy and liver disease in menopause, including the first AASLD Practice Guidance on Reproductive Health and Liver Disease. 

As an active member of the AASLD, she has served on its Scientific Program Committee and Nominating Committee.  She was a member of the AASLD Diversity Task Force that led to the creation of the Inclusion and Diversity Committee.  She has served as chair of the AASLD Program Evaluation Committee (currently known as the Continuing Medical Education Committee) and as chair of the Inclusion and Diversity Committee.  She became a Fellow of the Association in 2016.

What inspired you to choose hepatology?
I chose Hepatology because it combines the fascination of pathophysiology and challenges of diseases. I like this is a subspecialty of Internal Medicine that delves into most areas of human health!

What is your professional area of focus?
I am fortunate to be able to practice as a clinician, educator and perform research. My main expertise and research interests are cirrhosis and its complications, interventional procedures in patients with cirrhosis and portal hypertension and biliary complications in liver transplant recipients.

What moment(s) in your career have you been most proud of?
There have been several; among the most pivotal was being accepted as Gastroenterology and Hepatology Fellow at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School and completing a Master’s Degree in Clinical Investigation at HMS and MIT in Boston. In addition, I was very honored to receive the Advanced Hepatology Training Award sponsored by AASLD to complete additional Transplant Hepatology training at BIDMC.

Did you have a mentor(s)? How was mentorship impactful for your career? Are you a mentor?
Of course, I had wonderful mentors that inspired me to follow this specialty. In particular Dr. J Thomas Lamont and Dr. Nezam Afdhal at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center which encouraged me to train in Gastroenterology and Hepatology and pursue a research fellowship in Hepatology at Hospital Clinic in Barcelona before my Clinical Fellowship at Harvard. In Barcelona, I was exceptionally fortunate to have Dr. Pere Gines and Dr. Vicente Arroyo as mentors, they both guided and trained me in Clinical Research.

I also currently mentor both residents and fellows. I believe we need to get them passionate about the field so they can advance their knowledge and take better care of our patients. If they are interested in research, I tell them to get specific training in clinical or basic research. This is key because formal training with a master’s degree or a Ph.D. will really teach you how to understand and conduct research.

What are some of the challenges facing hepatologists today? How do you think some of these issues can be addressed?
The greatest challenges are related to having enough time for patients and research. There is a growing amount of bureaucracy and paperwork that physicians need to deal with daily. We should equally focus our efforts and dedication to what we enjoy and is productive for our family, friends, job, and hobbies. 

As specialists we have the challenge of preventing liver-related disease from be that from NAFLD, alcoholic liver disease, and/or hepatitis B and C.

What’s a piece of advice (career or personal) you’ve received that has been helpful for you?

1. Surround myself with colleagues that have a similar drive and want the best for them and their patients.
2. Patient care, family, and friends always come first.
3. The best tool for performing research is time and patience!

Why is your AASLD membership important to you?
It is important because it was the first medical society I joined when I was a fellow.  I became involved with AASLD because of my mentors and because it is one the premier hepatology associations in the world. AASLD allows you engage in many areas including medical education, editorial boards, SIG, global outreach, public affairs, and research to name a few. It allows its members to easily network with colleagues from the United States and around the globe.

When you’re not working, what do you like to do?
I have many interests but perhaps not enough time to pursue them all! My hobbies are playing tennis, biking, jogging, skiing, and listening to all types of music.

Let's Connect
Twitter:@acv69cardenas

Following the advice of his instructor while pursuing his doctorate in toxicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Professor Gavin E. Arteel, PhD, FAASLD, joined the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. He would later become a Fellow of the AASLD and rank this achievement among one of the top experiences of his career.

“My mentor was a very enthusiastic member of the society and strongly encouraged his students to be the same,” says Dr. Arteel, now a faculty member of UPMC’s Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition, and the director of the Pittsburgh Liver Research Center’s Pilot and Feasibility program. Before starting at UPMC, he led a research team at the University of Louisville that focused on acute and chronic alcohol-induced liver injury, the inflammatory response in the liver, the sensitization of cytotoxic cell killing in the liver, and hepatic regeneration and remodeling. Dr. Arteel’s initial training was in biochemical toxicology, and he has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed medical journals like Gastroenterology and HEPATOLOGY on alcohol-induced liver injury, including the potentially preventive effects of the widely prescribed diabetes medication metformin.

“The liver is, in my opinion, the ideal organ for study for this field,” says Dr. Arteel. “As the main detoxifying organ in the body, the liver has a high likelihood of toxic injury, and it has several lines of defense that protect (or rebuild) from this injury. It’s only when these defense systems break down, or are overwhelmed, that you see significant liver injury. This process has always fascinated me, and my work to this day focuses on trying to better understand the underlying mechanisms that lead to the chronicity of liver disease.”

It may be no surprise that Dr. Arteel’s research focuses on the liver’s ability to rebuild itself, as he has had a longtime passion for construction of all types.

“I supported myself in college partly by building houses during the summer. I’m a pretty good DIYer, and almost always have some sort of remodeling or rebuilding house project going on,” he says. “It’s nice to do something that creates results that are more tangible than what my work often does.”

Dr. Arteel drew inspiration for his research career from the early advice his grandfather, Leonard, gave him: “Being successful is having something you love to do that you do well, and having either the luck or the foresight that it ends up being your job. Life’s too long to spend it doing something that you hate.” Luckily for the fields of toxicology and liver disease, Dr. Arteel enjoys studying, research, writing and mentoring young investigators.

He began his studies at the University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy, where he graduated cum laude in 1993. In 1995, his research data was included on the cover of the British Journal of Cancer, and in 1996, he earned the George L. O’Donaghue Memorial Predoctoral Fellowship from the American Liver Foundation. After earning his doctorate at UNC, Dr. Arteel was named an Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung Fellow, studying in Germany from 1998 to 2000, and then returned to UNC for a postdoctoral fellowship from 2000-2001 at the Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies.

At The Liver Meeting® 2001, Dr. Arteel participated in the Presidential Plenary Lecture, and just a year later, he received the President’s Choice Award. Additionally, Dr. Arteel received the Most Promising Basic Science Research faculty award in 2004, the Outstanding Young Investigator award in 2005 and the Scientific Importance faculty award in 2005, 2007 and 2013.

While widely recognized for his work, Dr. Arteel measures his career success by another metric. “These days, there are clear metrics by which one can measure the direct impact of a scientist on the field: the number of publications, your H-index, your i10-index. However, there is no metric for the impacts of a particular scientist via their efforts as a mentor,” says Dr. Arteel. “These contributions, while less tangible than publications, are arguably more important in the long term and are the true legacy of the scientist.”

He looks back with appreciation for his own formal and informal mentors, who took time out of their intense research or teaching schedules to advise and guide him at pivotal points in his career.

“I have no doubt that I would not be where I am today without their guidance,” says Dr. Arteel. “These experiences also cemented my commitment to academia, so I, in turn, can also serve as a mentor.”

"Involvement in AASLD connects busy professionals to the wider community, creating a truly valuable network of colleagues who share the same passion for liver disease research and improved patient outcomes," he says.

AASLD members are committed to the advancement of young members’ careers, which gives trainees the opportunity to network and build relationships with mentors. Mentorship has exponential benefits at every stage of one’s career, for both the mentor and the mentee. For Dr. Arteel, mentors reinforced his commitment to academic medicine and he hopes that their knowledge and advice will help him mentor his current and future students and colleagues.

Name: William F. Balistreri, MD, FAASLD

Institution: Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

When did you join AASLD?
I joined the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases [AASLD] in 1976.

Describe what AASLD was like at the time you joined.
What I recall was a focus on liver pathology, in both the abstract presentations and a recurring (biennial), specific Liver Biopsy Post Graduate Course. In these early meetings, presentations also addressed newly developed liver "function" tests (using analysis of enzymes, prothrombin time, gamma globulins, and protein electrophoresis, as well as assessment of the fate of injected substrates, such as BSP).

The clinical entities of key interest were alcohol-associated liver disease and viral hepatitis – there was no mention (and presumably no recognition) of the now dominant NAFLD. Of course, liver transplantation was still a dream!

What do you feel is your greatest accomplishment which has contributed to the success of AASLD?
There are a few accomplishments I would like to share.

• Helping to catalyze the formal emergence of a body of knowledge and an organized focus on disorders of the liver in early life – Pediatric Hepatology – the development of a new clinical subspecialty. Over the past 20 years, the pace of patient‐ and laboratory‐based research in the field has expanded, allowing the deciphering of the consequences of genetic or metabolic aberrations on immature liver structure and function. These clinical advances led to development of specific approaches to the diagnosis and management of liver disease in infants and children, including both liver transplantation and nontransplant treatment options. These events were followed by expansion of the workforce, creating a critical mass of pediatric hepatologists / transplant specialists, consisting of individuals with focused, specialized skills and techniques.
• This rite of passage has been marked by the election of four pediatric hepatologists to AASLD leadership (President).
• Further validation of the field occurred with approval of the petition to establish a Certificate of Added Qualification in Transplant Hepatology by the American Board of Pediatrics. (ref = HEPATOLOGY 2013;58:458‐476)

What would people be surprised to learn about AASLD from "back in the day?"
Maybe not too surprising – the meeting took place in small, smoke-filled rooms, with limited reliance on audiovisual elements (simple podium presentations – No PowerPoint!).

There was a relatively selective membership process!

What would you say is AASLD's great strength?
AASLD has several strengths.

• The broad focus of AASLD activities and thus the ability to unify and integrate all those with an interest in liver disease – thus the opportunity for all to have a voice.
• The promotion and discussion (at several levels) of the extraordinary advances in basic sciences and how to successfully apply these principles to human liver disease.
• Development of a broad and accessible education profile
• Interaction with other societies – the success of the AASLD has fostered the growth and development of international liver organizations such as the International Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, the European Association for the Study of the Liver, and the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver.

What would you say is AASLD's biggest accomplishment in its first 70 years?
There are several "society related" accomplishments – specifically the establishment of The Liver Meeting® and the inauguration of the official journals – HEPATOLOGY, Clinical Liver Disease, and Hepatology Communications. In addition, the establishment of hepatology as a focused discipline – leading to ABIM and ABP Certification, with expansion of the work force.

In terms of clinical impact, AASLD members (and The Liver Meeting®) have played a major role in the identification of the causative agent of "non-A non-B" hepatitis – the molecular delineation of the hepatitis C virus in the late 70s. This allowed, over the next 25-30 years, the development of highly effective antiviral agents – a major step towards global elimination of this potentially devastating disease.

The AASLD members and The Liver Meeting® have highlighted detailed molecular studies of inherited forms of cholestasis. This in turn led to a greater understanding of normal liver metabolism (e.g. bile acid metabolism and transport mechanisms), as well as disease-related adaptive processes. This has opened the possibility of gene or cell therapy for these disorders.

There are several other accomplishments that could be mentioned: two examples – the advances in liver transplantation and linkage of liver disease mechanisms and potentially treatment to the gut microbiome.

How/where do you seen AASLD in the next 70 years?
I would envision continued growth and impact of the advocacy profile of AASLD – bringing public attention to liver health and disease. I also see the following happening.

• Expansion of the AASLD Foundation focus on research funding.
• Innovative discovery and precise application of clinical tools such as disease markers, genomic profiles, and novel pharmaceuticals.
• Given the success of the education profile of the AASLD, I would expect continued development of focused single topic conferences
• Given the impact of social media, I would expect enhanced communication among those interested in liver diseases – fortifying the bridges between basic scientists, physician-scientists and clinicians.

Steven K. Herrine, MD, FAASLD, the Program Director of Transplant Hepatology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and one of the creators of the AASLD Foundation’s Emerging Liver Scholars Program, has been a consistently active AASLD member since he started his career. He’s served as the chair of several AASLD volunteer committees in the past, and through his involvement, "Early on, I saw the value of commitment to and involvement with AASLD. It's not just holding a membership card. I have met more valuable colleagues than I can count.”

“I first joined AASLD as a trainee, and I’ve only missed on Annual Meeting since that time,” says Dr. Herrine, whose specialties include treating patients with gastrointestinal cancers and liver disease, including those who require transplant surgery. He says he was attracted to this subspecialty because he identified closely with the way hepatologists approach their work: with care, sympathy and attention to detail. “The individuals involved in the care of patients with liver disease are my type of people.”

In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Herrine also conducts hepatology research, and teaches and mentors those just starting in their hepatology careers. “Anything I have the opportunity to publish with our trainees” are the journal articles he says he is most proud to showcase. He’s also proud of the “influence I have had on many trainees as they became transplant hepatologists.”

Dr. Herrine’s work in transplant hepatology and GI cancer treatment at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals has earned him several notable honors over the past decade. He was named the Internal Medicine Residency Teacher of the Year at the institution and the recipient of the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award in 2015. In 2010, Dr. Herrine was given the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching at Jefferson Medical College, and was also highlighted in a Senior Class Portrait.

Serving as a mentor to hepatology trainees and young investigators is a way for him to follow in the footsteps of Santiago Munoz, MD, “my first hepatologic mentor, who taught me that fastidiousness of care is the key to good patient outcomes,” he says.

Outside of the classroom, laboratory and clinic, Dr. Herrine enjoys spending time in the kitchen. “I can cook pretty well,” he shares. A fulfilling career is based on pursuing the goals that you find most rewarding, he says. “Do what makes you happy.”

Throughout his pediatric hepatology career, John Bucuvalas, MD, has led liver care programs at major academic hospitals and collaborated on critical research projects, including a recent trial of immunosuppression withdrawal with Sandy Feng, MD. When met with challenges like hierarchical department structures and inefficient clinic layouts, Dr. Bucuvalas looked beyond medicine for answers. He collaborated with professors at Harvard Business School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and architects from urban design nonprofit LA Más to create management and communication efficiencies in clinical settings.

"If you go back 150 years in medicine, it was the most senior people who knew the most. But millennials are growing up in a completely different world. You learn from different sources," says Dr. Bucuvalas, chief of hepatology and vice chair of faculty affairs in the Jack and Lucy Clark Department of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai Kravis Children’s Hospital in New York. "I look for effective internal communications strategies and goals for our team, and we have bi-directional communications."

Before coming to Mt. Sinai, he spent more than 25 years at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where he was trained by hepatologists Bill Balistreri, Fred Suchy and Ron Sokol. At first, few treatment options were available for his seriously ill young patients.

"In my first year as a fellow, I had nine or 10 kids die due to biliary atresia or acute tumors. It was a challenge to take care of these kids," he says. "I thought, ‘How do we get them to live and go on to live full, meaningful lives? But I hit it at the right time, because treatment of viral hepatitis and transplantation became possible."

Cincinnati Children’s was the only pediatric hospital awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant to help transform healthcare. To achieve that goal, he studied business management and social science. “I started learning concepts that are completely outside of medicine and applying them to health care. It has been really cool to integrate knowledge across many disciplines.” His perspective has been shaped by collaborating with leaders like Scott Hamlin, Uma Kotagal, Tom Boat, Jim Anderson, Tom Nolan and Lloyd Provost.

Dr. Bucuvalas noticed that his Cincinnati Children’s staff encountered frequent interruptions during rounds, so he consulted architect Elizabeth Timme. Her solution was disarmingly simple: Placing tape on the floors to create paths for people to follow as they went through daily routines. Visual paths helped to increase efficiency. He also studied Harvard Professor Ethan Bernstein’s theories, including "the need for privacy and transparency in business. When people make decisions, they need privacy or a safe place to do it," he says. "How do you apply the integration of complementary care and interdisciplinary care? You need to have new knowledge filtered into traditional research. How do we work together? That’s what we have learned from social scientists. Now, I am cognizant of when people on my staff need privacy so they can do their jobs more effectively."

The longtime AASLD member become a Fellow (FAASLD) in 2014. “Recognition from a great organization like AASLD that I made a contribution to my field is a special honor,” he says. The Boston area native and his wife, Connie, have two grown children, Abby and Zach, and they enjoy traveling and rooting for the New England Patriots.

While a medical student at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in her native Brazil, Cynthia Levy realized that her calling was to be a hepatologist.

"I was assigned to a rotation in the hepatology clinic, and I was inspired by the hepatologist in charge," says Dr. Levy. "I was very impressed with his knowledge and professionalism, and the way he talked to his patients as well as to the medical students."

After completing her medical school and residency in Brazil, Dr. Levy came to the University of Miami to pursue further training. She says that she does not regret having to complete her internal medicine residency again, because during her time in Miami, she first interacted with Eugene Schiff, MD, FAASLD, a Past-President of the AASLD. She found Dr. Schiff to be a tremendously charismatic individual who reinforced her vision of a career in hepatology research and clinical care.

Dr. Levy left Miami's sunny beaches to complete a gastroenterology fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where she was mentored by another AASLD Past-President, Keith Lindor, MD, FAASLD.

"My academic career really began there. As soon as I started working with [Dr. Lindor] on cholestatic and autoimmune liver diseases research, I was assigned to write my first review, which was on primary biliary cholangitis," she recalls. "It is funny how, once you write a review, you are automatically seen as an expert! That certainly encouraged me to deepen my knowledge and expertise in this area and develop a niche. I had a great mentor and sponsor for that in Dr. Lindor." While at Mayo Clinic, Dr. Levy completed her Clinical Research Certificate on clinical trial design, which became her professional passion.

After her time in Minnesota, Dr. Levy returned to the Sunshine State when she was awarded AASLD’s Advanced Hepatology Fellowship to train for one year at the University of Florida in Gainesville. At UF, she worked under the guidance of David Nelson, MD, FAASLD, who encouraged her to pursue research efforts in her preferred niche, cholestatic liver diseases. She went on to design her first clinical trial to evaluate treatment of primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) patients who did not respond to the standard of care. Dr. Levy recalls that her time at UF and the success of this clinical trial helped crystallize her ultimate career path: to become a thought leader in the field of cholestatic and autoimmune liver diseases. After the PBC trial ended, Paul Martin, MD, FASSLD, recruited her to return to the University of Miami.

"At the Schiff Center for Liver Diseases, I’ve been able to establish a team of coordinators and students who help me nourish national and international research collaborations, including registries and clinical trials in cholestatic liver diseases," says Dr. Levy. "It’s all come together nicely, but only because of the mentors I’ve had along the way who have pointed me in the right direction or told me when it was wise to wait until the right time to do certain trials." Patience, she realized, is a powerful tool in the world of clinical trials, where funding opportunities are driven by so many different forces.

Dr. Levy’s current research program mainly focuses on rare cholestatic diseases like PBC and primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). Her team’s research explores potential treatments, advancing the management of symptoms like pruritus and improving the quality of life for liver disease patients, "including after a liver transplant, because the disease can recur," she notes.

As Program Director of the Transplant Hepatology Fellowship, Dr. Levy has embraced the role of mentor, guiding young physicians and researchers. She is the Principal Investigator for the NIH Porphyria Consortium at UM and a Fellow of the American Gastroenterology Association, and she was honored to be named a Fellow of the AASLD in 2017, where she has served on various committees. Her experience with AASLD shaped her into a better leader, she says. Due to her achievements in clinical care and her commitment to liver research, Dr. Levy was also endowed with the Arthur Hertz Chair in Liver Diseases at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in June 2019.

Dr. Levy enjoys Miami’s international flavor, diverse population, tropical climate, and direct flights to and from Brazil. Dr. Levy enjoys playing the piano and is an avid reader, including novels, histories and books on leadership theory. She listens to podcasts and audiobooks during her daily, 45-minute highway commute. "I love to travel, so I like reading up about the place I’m going to visit, its culture and history, before I go."

Hepatology appealed to Alexander L. Gerbes, MD because it is a specialty that encompasses “a broad spectrum of relevant diseases and the development of novel treatment options,” he says.

"Education determines the quality of medicine in the future. And the interaction with younger colleagues is often challenging and always rewarding."

Treating a patient with liver disease early in his training inspired him to explore the field. Looking back, it was the “care of a patient with unclear etiology of ascites in my second year as an intern which prompted my first clinical studies and papers on differential diagnosis of ascites,” he says. While attending the University of Munich Medical School, he traveled to the United States to complete an internship at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center’s Moffitt Hospital, now Moffitt-Long Hospital in 1979. He completed a second internship at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, the United Kingdom in 1981. Prof. Gerbes graduated magna cum laude from medical school in 1982. He now serves as the Vice Chief in the Department of Medicine II at the Klinikum der Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) of Munich in Germany.

Early on in his career, several influential mentors inspired Prof. Gerbes and helped guide his career as a hepatology researcher.

“I was fortunate to train with several very dedicated clinical teachers, such as Tilman Sauerbruch and Gustav Paumgartner, who was an outstanding mentor guiding me toward a scientific, hypothesis-driven approach,” he says. “He taught me to always strive for clarity and precision in medicine and in science.”

His body of research includes studies on hepatocellular carcinoma, cirrhosis, and other potentially life-threatening liver diseases. He describes why these challenging, complex conditions appealed to him as a scientist and a doctor.

“During most of my research, I was fascinated by a translational approach, investigating parameters, methods and tools with potential benefits for our patients. This may explain why I focused on these diseases, which still represent major challenges,” he says. His current and future focus includes researching drug-induced liver injury (DILI), which is “still a major cause of severe, acute liver injury. In particular, the idiosyncratic type, although rare, can lead to death or the need for a liver transplant. Diagnosis is done by exclusion of other well-defined causes and by expert adjudication. However, many patients regularly take several drugs, and often, it is impossible to determine the culprit. Because of this, all medication in these subjects regularly are discontinued, putting the patient at additional risks.”

DILI also is a frequent cause of attrition of innovative compounds in drug development, and of restrictions or postmarketing withdrawal of the drugs, he says. More accurate tests could help overcome these barriers.

“My group has developed an in vitro test using the white blood cells of individual patients with suspicion of DILI which are transformed into hepatocyte-like cells reflecting the patient’s individual drug intolerance,” says Prof. Gerbes. “This test can diagnose and exclude DILI with good accuracy, and identify the culprit drug in polymedicated individuals. We now focus on using this novel tool as the basis to enable the development of DILI biomarkers.”

When he isn’t working, he enjoys exploring the beauty of nature outside the walls of a laboratory or clinic and spending time with his family. He is married and has one child. He is fond of jazz music and classic cars.

Prof. Gerbes has been a member of AASLD since 1987 and was named a Fellow in 2014. He is also a Fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association and of the European Board of Gastroenterology. He has served as the Associate Editor and Deputy Editor of GUT. Most recently, he was elected President 2018 at the annual meeting of the Society for Gastroenterology in Bavaria (GfGB) in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. He believes that involvement in the AASLD and other medical societies that support research and medical education are important and personally fulfilling.

“Being an active member of these societies is almost like being part of a big family with similar interests and values. The annual meetings are like family gatherings, and are an ideal opportunity to meet with colleagues who have become friends for a long time,” he says. “Education determines the quality of medicine in the future. And the interaction with younger colleagues is often challenging and always rewarding.”

He urges young hepatologists and gastroenterologists now in training to find challenging research topics that personally interest them, regardless of their commercial aspects.

Prof. Gerbes advises trainees to “Hang on, and when doing clinical research, never forget the individual patient’s problems that you are caring for.”