Ashwani K. Singal MD, MS, FACG, FAASLD, AGAF

Ashwani K. Singal, M.D., is a transplant hepatologist with excellence in all three pillars of academic medicine: a) community service and patient care, b) teaching and mentoring, and c) clinical / translational research. Dr. Singal is an astute clinician in hepatology and liver transplantation and is recognized worldwide as a clinical translational researcher in alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD), alcohol use disorder (AUD), mitochondrial health and bioenergetics, and porphyria.

Some of the novel contributions of Dr. Singal include observation of similar survival after liver transplantation of patients with alcohol-associated cirrhosis and those with alcohol-associated hepatitis (AH). This publication in Hepatology, very early in his academic independent career in the US in 2011, provided impetus to the acceptance of early liver transplant in patients with ALD.

Dr. Singal was also the first to demonstrate the feasibility of using peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from patients with AH to study their mitochondrial health as a biomarker for predicting response to corticosteroids. He performed these studies as a PI on a grant (2014-2017) from the American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) and as an MPI on an R21 award (2015-2017) from the NIAAA at NIH. With over 320 publications (150 in ALD) with a current h-index of 63 earned him national visibility and invitations to be a lead author on ACG clinical guidelines on ALD in 2018 (over 900 citations so far), lead co-author on revised ALD guidelines in 2024, and contribute a review article on ALD in 2021 for primary care providers in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). He was also the site PI at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) for the NIDDK UO1-funded Porphyria Consortium. In his seminal randomized clinical trial published in Clinical Gastroenterology Hepatology, Dr. Singal showed that low-dose hydroxychloroquine and repeated phlebotomy are equally effective and safe in the treatment of porphyria cutanea tarda.

Dr. Singal came to the US in 2005 to develop an academic career after being a faculty member at the University of Delhi (1988-1992), private practice in Delhi (1993-2000), and an academic gastroenterologist in Gizan, Saudi Arabia (2001-2004). After retraining in the US (2005-2008), Dr. Singal completed GI fellowship and Masters in Clinical Research (2008-2011) at UTMB, TX, and a transplant hepatology fellowship (2011-2012) at Mayo Clinic MN, before starting independent academic career at UAB in Aug. 2012. He then moved to the University of South Dakota (USD) in 2019 to become the Chief of Clinical Research at Avera Medical Center and Director of Hepatology Elective for senior medical students at USD. Dr. Singal moved to the University of Louisville in July 2023 to join the elite team and division of Hepatology. He is currently Professor of Medicine, Director of Clinical Trials in Hepatology, Transplant Hepatologist at Trager Transplant Center, and Research Scientist at Rob Rexley VA Medical Center in Louisville.

Dr. Singal continues clinical translational research in ALD in collaboration with basic scientists, utilizing an excellent research environment set up under the leadership of Dr. McClain. As an active member of the P50 NIH-funded Alcohol Research Center, his focus is to study mitochondrial health in ALD patients. He is also an MPI on the NIAAA UO1-funded AH Network. The long-term goal of Dr. Singal’s research focus is to develop mitochondrial and nutrition-based effective medications for ALD and for AUD.