Digestive Diseases

Loren Laine, MD, Section Chief

Thiruvengadam Muniraj, MD, Clinical Chief (Endoscopy)

Hamita Sachar, MD, Clinical Chief (Gastroenterology)

Joseph Lim, MD, Clinical Chief (Hepatology)

New Digestive Health Center

Yale’s new Digestive Health Center in North Haven, a hub offering advanced care for gastrointestinal (GI) and liver disorders, welcomed its first patients on January 31, 023. Located at 8 Devine Street, the facility serves as a home for the Center for Weight Management, the Center for Nutrition and Wellness, the Fatty Liver Disease Program, the Gastrointestinal Motility Program, the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program, General Gastroenterology, and the GI and Pancreatic Cancer Prevention Program.

The center cooperates with Yale School of Medicine, Yale Medicine, and Yale New Haven Health. It also features facilities supporting clinical research for patients as well as the Irving and Alice Brown Teaching Kitchen—an excellent new resource to facilitate healthful eating and cooking education.

The GI and Pancreatic Cancer Prevention Program, which opened in the summer of 2023, includes the Lynch Syndrome and Polyposis and Hereditary Gastric Cancer clinics, directed by Xavier Llor, MD, PhD, and the Pancreatic Cancer Early Detection Clinic, directed by James Farrell, MBChB. The program provides patients with in-person and telehealth options for personal cancer risk assessment and testing to inform medical decisions. In addition to serving as a home for cancer prevention within digestive diseases, the program allows patients to participate in research to advance knowledge about their conditions.

The Liver Home

The Liver Home is a new outpatient program that offers multidisciplinary care for individuals with cirrhosis to improve such outcomes as transplant candidacy and survival—and decrease the number of emergency room visits and hospitalizations.

Overseen by Simona Jakab, MD, the program provides comprehensive patient-centered access to medical and behavioral health care, social work services, addiction medicine, and nutrition.

Improving Lives Through Research

Tamar Taddei, MD, is co-chairing the largest clinical trial related to liver cancer screening in history. The VA Cooperative Studies Program (CSP) study, known as PREMIUM—PREventing liver cancer Mortality through Imaging with Ultrasound vs. MRI—aims to determine whether screening for liver cancer with abbreviated magnetic resonance imaging is more effective in detecting the disease in early stages than is ultrasound—the current standard of care in screening.

Michael Schilsky, MD, is conducting a clinical trial that offers patients with Wilson disease a groundbreaking treatment for the rare genetic condition. In this condition, excessive amounts of copper accumulate in the body, particularly in the liver and brain. Schilsky’s clinical trial uses gene therapy to genetically modify the liver to produce a protein that removes copper from the body. The novel treatment has the potential to help patients all over the world.

The section has eight new junior faculty members who have received federally funded career development awards to support their research over the last three years.

The Yale Liver Center, now in its 39^th year of existence, remains the crown jewel of the section’s research. Investigators from 24 sections/departments across Yale School of Medicine are broadly involved. The Liver Center remains NIH-funded— one of only three NIDDK-sponsored liver centers in the United States.

Honors and Awards

Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao, MD, received the 2023 International Mentor Award from the Asociación Latinoamericana para el Estudio del Hígado (ALEH). Garcia-Tsao’s research focuses on cirrhosis, portal hypertension, and the complications of these conditions.

Priya Jamidar, MBChB, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Connecticut Association of Physicians of Indian Origin. Jamidar has vital clinical and research interests in bile duct cancers, pancreatic cancer, large bile duct stones, and the endoscopy of acute recurrent and chronic pancreatitis.

Joseph Lim, MD, was selected as editor-in-chief of Clinical Liver Disease, an open-access multimedia journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). Lim conducts patient-oriented research evaluating clinical outcomes in chronic liver disease; he also runs an active clinical trials program examining novel investigational agents for viral hepatitis and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.

Thiruvengadam Muniraj, MD, was appointed associate editor of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the official journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE). An advanced endoscopist, Muniraj investigates pancreatic diseases and interventional endoscopy.

Michael Nathanson, MD, PhD, received the 2022 Distinguished Service Award from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. Nathanson is the director of the Yale Liver Center and the Center for Cellular and Molecular Imaging (CCMI) at Yale School of Medicine.

Silvia Vilarinho, MD, PhD, was appointed director of the Internal Medicine Physician Scientist Training Program. She also received the 2023 Leah Lowenstein Award at the 2023 Yale School of Medicine commencement ceremony. Vilarinho uses genetics and genomics to study liver diseases of unknown origin.