Aijaz Ahmed, MD, Professor, Medicine/Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Stanford University

Research Description: Over the last 10 years, Dr. Ahmed’s clinical and translational research have focused on the complications of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and viral hepatitis (hepatitis B and C virus infections) with increasing interest in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) – an unmet need. He is the medical director of the liver transplant program at Stanford, a region of the United States (US) with the worst imbalance in patients waiting for liver transplantation versus availability of allograft due to the severe donor organ (cadaver donor) shortage. Currently, approximately 50% of liver transplants in the US are performed for HCC in the setting of chronic fibrotic liver disease. Poor implementation of screening protocols at the primary care level; diagnostic challenges due to lack of accurate biomarkers accompanied by limitations in abdominal radiological imaging; and delayed linkage to care associated with shortage of hepatologists in small communities and rural areas of the US have been responsible for high mortality rate in patients with HCC – expected to rank 5th in 2019 among cancer-related mortality in the US. While viral hepatitis is no longer the leading indication for liver transplantation thanks to highly effective antiviral therapy; in the next 10 years NAFLD will become the leading liver disease resulting in fibrosis, cirrhosis, and HCC. Prevention of obesity-related NAFLD is the most important clinical research and management challenge in hepatology as 100 million individuals are expected to develop NAFLD in the US by 2030 with up to 30 million presenting with a more aggressive subset of NAFLD, known as nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Basic research remains equally important to understand the major pathogenetic pathways resulting in hepatic fibrosis and its progression to cirrhosis and/or HCC with the hope of identifying therapeutic targets and advance curative treatment modalities – the goal is to develop treatments that prevent and non-surgically cure HCC in patients with NAFLD-related cirrhosis and HCC, and thereby obviate the need for liver transplantation. Dr. Ahmed collaborates extensively with many members of the NORC.