T. Jake Liang BA, MD

Dr. Liang is currently a tenured senior investigator and the Chief of Liver Diseases Branch, NIDDK, NIH. He graduated form Harvard College in 1980 and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1984. He completed his internal medicine residency training in New York University/Bellevue Hospital Center, and fellowship training in gastroenterology and hepatology in Massachusetts General Hospital. He stayed on as a faculty member and Assistant Professor of Medicine in Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In 1996, he moved to the intramural program of NIDDK, NIH as the Chief of Liver Diseases Section and later was promoted to the Chief of Liver Diseases Branch. While at NIH, Dr. Liang established a fully integrated program of clinical investigation and basic research in liver disease. He is the training director of the NIH hepatology fellowship program that has trained and produced many international academic leaders in the field of liver disease. He also participated in the establishment of the Multi-specialty Senior Clinical Research Fellowship program at NIDDK, designing to train clinical investigators in interdisciplinary translational research. His research accomplishments in the field of viral hepatitis include identifying and characterizing various HBV variants, defining a novel genetic element of hepatitis B virus, elucidating the biological functions of HBV X gene, developing in vitro systems to generate HCV-like particles for vaccine development and to produce infectious HCV virus, creating transgenic mouse models to study hepatitis C, and discerning key steps in the pathogenesis of viral hepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma. He has published over 100 papers and edited numerous books. He was also the recipient of British Liver Scholar Award and Leon Schiff Lectureship Award from Univ. of Cincinnati. Dr. Liang has been an associate editor for both Gastroenterology and Hepatology journals and has served on various advisory committees of national academic societies in the field of gastroenterology and hepatology. He has also been a regular and ad hoc member of several NIH Study Sections and participated in grant review committees of various professional organizations. He was elected to the ASCI in 1996 and AAP in 2002. He has also been the NIH institutional representative to ASCI.