‘Love Your Liver’ next intallment in medical school lecture series

Most people don’t give much thought to their liver until something goes wrong.

UB faculty are trying to change that with an event they’re holding on Sept. 15 called “Love Your Liver: The Latest Strategies and Clinical Developments.”

It will take place from 4–5:30 p.m. on the fifth floor of UB’s Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC), 875 Ellicott St. Parking is available in the ramp across the street; valet parking is available at the building’s main entrance.

Those who plan to attend the free, public event are encouraged to contact Denise Hathaway at 716-829-5708 or deniseha@buffalo.edu.

“The purpose of this lecture is to increase awareness of the liver’s importance to overall health and to engage the public about the newest treatments and cures that are now available in Buffalo,” says Andrew H. Talal, professor in the Department of Medicine, School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, who sees patients at UBMD, the physician practice plan of the UB medical school.

Patients with liver disease and their families, as well as healthy people who want to know more about liver health, are encouraged to attend.

Topics to be covered include:

• What the liver does and why it’s important.
• The establishment of comprehensive liver clinics and telemedicine programs in UB’s affiliated teaching hospitals, which have greatly expanded the number of patients receiving state-of-the art liver care in the region.
• Innovative translational research programs and clinical trials being conducted at UB that are giving Western New Yorkers access to effective new therapies many years before they are available to the general public.
• Approaches to promote patient safety and avoid medication-related liver problems, using health information technology.

In addition to Talal, attendees also will hear from Anthony Martinez, clinical associate professor of medicine, who sees patients at UBMD, and Gene D. Morse, SUNY Distinguished Professor, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

An internationally recognized expert in the development and evaluation of new therapies for liver disease, Talal is director of UBMD Internal Medicine’s Center for Clinical Care and Research in Liver Disease. He also directs a recently established biorepository for liver disease at the CTRC.

Talal and Martinez work with patients at the liver clinic at Erie County Medical Center, having tripled the clinic’s capacity to treat patients with viral hepatitis and other forms of liver disease. They are conducting clinical trials on liver disease at the CTRC and they also see patients at a comprehensive liver clinic at Buffalo General Medical Center.

Martinez’s focus is on improving hepatitis C treatments in populations disproportionately affected by hepatitis C virus (HCV) but with limited access to health care, ethnic minority groups, injection drug users and patients with psychological disorders; he also is developing novel modalities to deliver care, such as telemedicine and ways to increase treatment access through rural primary care clinics and methadone clinics.

Morse, a professor in the Department of Pharmacy Practice, conducts drug development research in HIV and HCV research, and has directed development of the translational pharmacology research core and other research programs at UB’s Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences. He is principal investigator for a National Institutes of Health contract for Quality Assurance in HIV Clinical Pharmacology Programs, director of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Clinical Pharmacology Core and director of UB’s Patient Safety Organization, a federally designated program of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

The lecture is part of the UB medical school’s Partners in Discovery Lecture Series, a free public lecture series for the Western New York community in which faculty from the UB medical school and throughout the university discuss the latest developments in health and medicine.

Upcoming events in UB’s Partners in Discovery Lecture Series:

• “An Inside Look at Post-Traumatic Brain Injury, Epilepsy, and Stroke,” 4 p.m., Oct. 13, with faculty from the Department of Neurosurgery.
• “Autoimmune Disease: A Constellation of Conditions,” 4 p.m., Nov. 3 with Animesh Sinha, Rita M. and Ralph T. Behling Professor and chair of the Department of Dermatology.