Valerie Gouon-evans PharmD, PhD

Valerie Gouon-Evans, PharmD, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Section of Gastroenterology at the Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, Director of the Program of Boston University Liver Biologists (BULB), and Associate Director of the Molecular & Translational Medicine (MTM) PhD Program of the Department of Medicine.

After completing her graduate studies in Paris, Dr. Gouon-Evans joined Dr. Pollard's Lab as a postdoctoral fellow where she studied mammary gland development and breast cancer. She then began her career as an Instructor of Gene and Cell Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York in the laboratory of Dr. Gordon Keller, where she pioneered protocols to efficiently generate hepatocyte-like cells from pluripotent stem cells. She quickly rose up the ranks and was promoted to Assistant Professor before arriving at Boston University. As a PharmD PhD lab leader for 16 years, Dr. Gouon-Evans has overseen the creation of a research program to advance understanding of liver development and establishing therapeutic strategies to alleviate liver disease using an induced pluripotent stem cell platform and mouse models. Recently, Dr. Gouon-Evans's lab also pioneered an innovative technology to deliver regenerative factors to the liver to treat various liver diseases, by using mRNA complexed to lipid nanoparticles, which is a validated platform with the widely used mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines.