Liver Pathobiology and Gene Therapy Research Core Center

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An interdisciplinary Liver Research Center was established at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1974 with support from NIDDK. At present, 38 faculty investigators and 3 provisional investigators in 12 departments at the medical school, together with 12 Consultants/Collaborators and 5 Supporting Staff Faculty at AECOM, constitute the Liver Research Center. The major objective is to understand fundamental mechanisms of normal liver function, as well as alterations in these function resulting from diseases caused by metabolic, drug, inheritable and infectious (viral) agents. Specific areas under study include transport processes, membrane receptor biology, and structural-functional relationships; molecular biology, somatic gene transfer and gene therapy and mechanisms of hepatic carcinogenesis; hepatic cell transplantation and liver repopulation; liver cell metabolism, mechanisms of liver injury and organelle pathology. By bringing excellent basic scientists into disease related research, together with hepatologists interested in fundamental mechanisms of hepatic dysfunction, we believe that imaginative approaches to basic cell biology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of liver disease will emerge. The Center is the focus of an active research-oriented education program (research seminars, visiting scientists, pathobiology sessions and work-in-progress discussion groups), and has extensive collaborative studies with investigators in other institutions. Core facilities, including Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cell Culture and Genetic Engineering, Imaging and Cell Structure, Special Animals and Administrative, efficiently facilitate interdisciplinary research projects. Facilities include 38 well-equipped laboratories for major investigators, 5 core facilities, Animal Institute, and all institutional support services (library, engineering, computer center, etc.). The available clinical facilities include a 1100 bed general hospital (Bronx Municipal Hospital Center), Montefiore Hospital (729 beds) and the Jack D. Weiler Hospital of Albert Einstein College of Medicine (375 beds). A large and diverse patient population provides many individuals with viral, alcoholic and parasitic live disease, as well as various inheritable disorders of the liver. The Center is directed by the Principal Investigator (Dr. David A. Shafritz) and Associate Director (Dr. Allan W. Wolkoff), governed by an Executive Committee, advised and reviewed by a Scientific Advisory Committee and functions through several school-wide committees. The Center was officially chartered by the medical school in 1977 as a free standing, extra- and supra-departmental entity. The importance of the Liver Research Center to the College of Medicine has been reconfirmed by extensive renovation of existing facilities, updating of equipment, an endowment fund and recruitment of new faculty with resources provided by the previous Dean, Dominick P. Purpura, M.D. and the present Dean. Allen Spiegel, M.D.