AASLD and NIH: Interview with Gyongyi Szabo 

|

AASLD’s NIH Liaison Committee plays an extremely important role in creating awareness of the growing need for funding for liver disease research. The committee strives to continually improve our relationship with NIH and its various institutes, as AASLD has expanded from originally working with just the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) to dealing with other institutes. Under the leadership of Chair Gyongyi Szabo, MD, PhD, the committee “now works with every possible NIH institute that will help fund liver disease research.” Along with the AASLD Governing Board, the NIH Liaison Committee visits several NIH institutes every year with the goal of continuously stressing the need to financially support the study of liver disease.

Another important charge of the NIH Liaison Committee is the coordination of an annual NIH Corner, held during The Liver Meeting® every fall. This year’s NIH Corner “Alcohol and Liver Disease: Recent Insights and New Directions” will be held in conjunction with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), with Dr. Szabo serving as course director along with Drs. Sam Zakhari and Craig McClain. Participants will address issues important to clinicians and health care providers who treat patients with alcoholic liver disease who may also have co-morbidities including obesity, infection with HCV or HIV, or drug-induced liver damage. In addition, a group of experts will discuss recent discoveries on alcohol-induced liver damage as it relates to fatty liver and present updates on the role of epigenetic modulation, mitochondrial damage, liver axis, and stem cells as they relate to liver disease. The 2010 NIH Corner will coincide with the 60^th anniversary of NIDDK, and the committee is actively working with NIDDK leadership to develop another exciting program.

The committee is also very involved in the ongoing discussion focusing on the proposed merger of NIAAA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Dr. Szabo affirms the committee’s efforts to best represent the AASLD constituency, pointing out the “concerns that have been expressed about merging since NIAAA works more with liver disease research, and we need to maintain the liver focus of NIAAA.” She mentions the importance of working with the AASLD Public Policy Committee in order to best address this controversial subject, as the respective committees’ issues overlap as far as the need to represent the AASLD membership and firmly express its opinions on the merger.

The NIH Liaison Committee plans to make use of the enhanced functionality of the recently restructured AASLD website to make the membership aware of as much relevant information as possible, including funding opportunities, career development prospects, and other awards. In addition, the committee is working on creating a session, to be held during The Liver Meeting®, which would guide participants in how to write a grant application and present it to NIH.

Dr. Szabo is Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean for Clinical and Translational Research and Director of Liver Center at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, MA. In addition to chairing the NIH Liaison Committee, she serves as Associate Editor for the journal HEPATOLOGY.