About the Cirrhosis Advisory Board
The focus of the Cirrhosis Ad Board is to provide a unique board that advises sites, communities and Sponsors alike. The Cirrhosis Adboard’s ultimate goal is to come up with solutions that help close the gap for the unmeet opportunity of research for the chronic patient population. Methods, such as using scientific evidence to target chronic patients, allows the board to provide more valuable resources and learning opportunities for community, patients, and physician-to-physician education.
Naim Alkhouri, MD
Board Chair
Naim Alkhouri, M.D., is the VP of Academic Affairs, Chief of Transplant Hepatology, and Director of the Fatty Liver Program at Arizona Liver Health (ALH) in Phoenix, AZ. Prior to joining ALH, Dr. Alkhouri served as the director of the Metabolic Health Center at the Texas Liver Institute and Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatric at the University of Texas (UT) Health in San Antonio, TX. Dr. Alkhouri completed his Gastroenterology and Transplant Hepatology training at the renowned Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, OH where he was also appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine and Director of the Metabolic Liver Disease Clinic at the Cleveland Clinic Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute. Dr. Alkhouri has been published in over 160 publications and presents his work at both national and international medical conferences. Among many research awards, Dr. Alkhouri received the American College of Gastroenterology Junior Faculty Development Award to study the analysis of breath volatile organic compounds to diagnose nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Dr. Alkhouri’s specialty interests include nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, metabolic liver diseases, viral hepatitis, autoimmune hepatitis, alpha 1 antitrypsin deficiency, and liver transplantation.
Mazen Noureddin, MD
Board Member
Dr. Noureddin is the founding director of the Fatty Liver Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (currently ranked #2 in GI and GI surgery per US News). Dr. Noureddin did his internal medicine residency at the University of Southern California (USC) and then moved to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he enrolled in a three-year hepatology fellowship at the Liver Diseases Branch of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). There, he finished the NIH/Duke University Master of Health Sciences in Clinical Research program. After completing his NIH fellowship, he completed a gastroenterology fellowship at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he was a T32 NIH fellow. He then joined the University of Southern California (USC) as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in 2013. He was then recruited to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2015 to establish its new fatty liver program.
Dr. Noureddin is internationally known for his research in the area of NAFLD/NASH and NASH related cirrhosis. He conducted more than 40 investigational clinical studies of novel treatments for NASH. In addition, he is an expert in non-invasive testing and biomarkers of the field, especially serum biomarkers, trainset elastography, and magnetic resonance imaging techniques. He has published in all these areas and has been invited to consensus panels on this topic by multiple societies including the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) and European Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (EASL). He has given invited lectures on NAFLD/NASH at national and international society meetings and serves on several steering committees/advisory boards for industry. He is the vice chair of the AASLD NASH special interest group (will be chairing the group in 2023) and serves on the editorial board for major GI journals including Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (CGH).He is one of the new Associate Editors of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (CGH) starting 2022. He is funded by the National Cancer Institute and has served as a reviewer on NIH study section. He has published in many journals including: The Lancet, Science Trinational Medicine, Journal of Hepatology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology and others.