The January 16, 2020 Department of Internal Medicine’s Annual Gerald Klatskin, MD, Lecture Medical Grand Rounds, “Diseases of the Biliary Tree; 2 Million Miles and Still Searching” was presented by Mario Strazzabosco, MD, PhD, professor of medicine (digestive diseases), clinical program leader, Liver Cancer Program, and deputy director, Yale Liver Center.
His talk detailed his two million mile career journey between Italy and the United States and the various patients he encountered that honed his interest in biliary disease. His career started in Italy, in which he shared an important case in his journey; a 36 year-old patient with fatigue, decreased appetite, and itching. The liver biopsy showed fibrosis in the patient’s bile duct, and along with other diagnostic tests, the patient was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis. This patient would follow him when he moved from Padova, Italy, to Bergamo, eventually receiving a liver transplant.
In 1985, discussions of his eventual emigration to the U.S. would begin when he met James Boyer, MD, FACEP, at an International Bile Acid Meeting in Cortina d’Ampezzo. The duo would start studying the pathobiology of cholangiocytes and once Strazzabosco felt like he could ‘take the helm,” he traveled back to Italy to start his lab.
“I thought I would focus on why and how the bile ducts got sick,” explained Strazzabosco. “This was very interesting because cholangiopathies were and still are a major unmet need in hepatology. We still don’t know how to treat them, and they are very interesting from a scientific point of view.”
Strazzabosco discussed his transition from the lab into liver transplantation, and back to the lab, and the patients he encountered along the way and the inspired the search for disease mechanisms. He shared findings of cholangiopathies in systemic conditions, such as cystic fibrosis.
He also discussed current work underway with Romina Fiorotto, PhD, on gut microbiota and the combination of a genetic mutation that affects biliary epithelia, and human disease modeling at the Yale Liver Center.
Strazzabosco urged the students in attendance to remain in medicine. “Remain in academia and remain in science,” he said. “Don’t think about the difficulties. Think about it prospectively. You can have a fun, meaningful life. You will meet bright people and see amazing places. You can innovate and make things happen. If you work at a place like Yale, there is no limit to what you can do.”
To learn more about Strazzabosco’s work, review the video from Medical Grand Rounds.
The 34th Gerald Klatskin, MD, Lecture was established in memory of Klatskin, considered one of the founding fathers of hepatology. In 1947, Klatskin performed the first liver biopsy at Yale. Shortly after, he founded the Liver Study Unit, a first in the United States. Klatskin pioneered the use of the liver biopsy as a diagnostic tool. The Klatskin tumor, a cholangiocarcinoma at the intersection of the right and left hepatic bile ducts, was named after him. Klatskin died in 1986.
To learn more about digestive disease research at Yale, visit Digestive Diseases.