Hepatotoxicity SIG: Herbal and Dietary Supplement Induced Liver Injury: Defining the Future

Victor J. Navarro

Victor J. Navarro, MD, MHCM, FAASLD earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from the Pennsylvania State College of Medicine and completed medical residency followed by chief residency in Internal Medicine at Temple University.  Thereafter, he obtained fellowship training in Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Hepatobiliary Endoscopy at Yale University.  In 1994, Dr. Navarro joined the faculty of the Yale University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and the Director of its Liver Failure and Transplantation service. He was also the Director of the State of Connecticut Emerging Infections Program Liver Study Unit.  His scholarly work while at Yale focused on the population-based epidemiology of chronic liver disease. In 2019, Dr. Navarro earned his Masters in Healthcare Management from Harvard University.

As a mentor, Dr. Navarro has been directly responsible for the scholarly and clinical training of many young and mid-career health professionals and academicians.  Dr. Navarro’s chief sources of research funding are the National Institutes of Health as an investigator for the U.S. Drug Induced Liver Injury Network (DILIN), and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute for his study of Palliative Care in Patients with End Stage Liver Disease.

Raul Andrade

Robert J. Fontana

Robert J. Fontana, MD, FAASLD is a Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of Liver Transplantation at the University of Michigan.  He is a clinical-translational investigator with research interests in viral hepatitis, drug induced liver injury and acute liver failure.  He is co-chair of the Drug Induced Liver Injury Network (DILIN) Steering Committee and an active participant in the Hepatitis B Research Network.   He has also been an active member of the US Acute Liver Failure Study Group since 1998 and is a current Co-PI of this multicenter network.   

Ikhlas Khan

Melissa Viray

Monique Salter

Adrian Reuben

Dr. Reuben is Professor of Medicine Emeritus (January 2015) at the Medical University of South Carolina, in Charleston SC, where he directed the Liver Program that he created there in 1993. Dr. Reuben was born, raised and educated in London, UK, where he obtained his medical degree, completed his Residency and Fellowship in Gastroenterology (Guys Hospital, London) before completing a scholarship in the Liver Study Unit at Yale School of Medicine. He was appointed to the faculty at Yale (1981-1993) before moving to MUSC to establish a Liver Service and enhance the then fledgling Liver Transplant program.

His continuing research interests focus on Acute Liver Failure, Coagulopathy in Liver Disease, Complications of Cirrhosis, and Drug Hepatotoxicity - in which he has co-authored many original articles.

In addition to all aspects of clinical hepatology, he has considerable experience in liver transplantation, portal hypertension and hepatocellular carcinoma - about which he edited two issue in Clinics in Liver Disease. Until 2006 he also had a laboratory-based career that focused initially on biliary lipid secretion, and later on hepatic fibrogenesis. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, editorials, case reports, book chapters and 44 essays on Hepatology history in the successful Landmarks in Hepatology series. Currently he is editing a new series of more than 50 essays on the History of Hepatology by renowned experts worldwide, to be published in the AASLD online journal Clinical Liver Disease (Editor: Nancy Reau, Rush Medical Center, Chicago IL).

Reuben has presented original research papers at national and international meetings as well as teaching in postgraduate courses and workshops, and presenting invited lectures in the United States, Europe, the UK, and Asia. He served on several committees of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease, including the Ethics Committee of which he was the Chair three years ago, and now he is the Chair-elect of the AASLD Hepatotoxicity Special Interest Group (SIG). Despite retirement from clinical practice, Adrian Reuben remains active in lecturing, collaborating in research projects, reviewing manuscripts, writing chapters and reviews as well as publishing original research articles. His interest in drug hepatotoxicity stems from his medical student days, when he obtained a bachelor degree in Pharmacology, and is exemplified by the publication of an original article in Hepatology, on Acute Liver Failure due to Drug-Induced Liver Injury, on behalf of the United States Acute Liver Failure Study Group (ALFSG), for which he was also the first author of an overview of 16 years’ experience in Acute Liver Failure.

Finally, Reuben is to be the recipient of the 2019 AASLD Distinguished Service Award.