Clinical Component

Since the Liver Research Center's last competitive renewal, the Division of Hepatology was recombined with the Division of Gastroenterology to form the Division of Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center, with Dr. Allan Wolkoff as the Division Chief of this unified service.

Within this Division is the Comprehensive Liver Program that includes specialists in hepatology, oncology, surgery, radiology, psychiatry, pediatric gastroenterology, and family medicine. This change in leadership and reorganization of the clinical services facilitates a new focus on translational research involving clinicians, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, and laboratory scientists to leverage the burden of liver disease in the Bronx, creating opportunities for innovative collaborative research. In addition, cutting-edge treatments for liver disease are available to patients, including advanced clinical trials, novel therapeutic approaches to complex problems, and liver transplantation. This clinical program now works closely with the LRC to bring new fundamental findings and research advances to the study and treatment of human liver diseases.

Services available in the clinical component include:

  1. a liver tissue and blood biorepository with an integrated informatics system that bridges the gap between inventory tracking, clinical and pathology annotation and use of this information for cohort extraction and studies on human tissues
  2. biostatistical support for the design and interpretation of patient-based studies by LRC investigators
  3. access to expertise and technology in epidemiology for design, implementation, quality control, and interpretation of epidemiologic studies

Availability of these new services has resulted in integration of translational research into the LRC. Use of the existing LRC Cores facilitated the development of epidemiological and clinical studies on subjects at risk for liver disease. In addition to ongoing epidemiological projects, a number of new initiatives provide a bridge between more basic liver-related studies and those that would be directly related to patients and patient-based materials. In large part, these projects stem from outreach programs to bring basic liver researchers together with clinical hepatologists and hepatobiliary surgeons.

In addition, the LRC has a close working relationship with the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) at Einstein and Montefiore. The ICTR provides access to the following: