About Us
Our mission
The mission of the Comprehensive Liver Research Center at UCLA is to understand every aspect of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) as it relates to the diverse population of Los Angeles County; at UCLA, we call this 'Total MASLD.' Our overriding objective is to mitigate the negative effects of this epidemic in our communities.
Guided by our tenants of diversity, outreach, basic clinical integration, career development and comprehensive biobanking, we intend to establish a comprehensive platform to increase awareness of MASLD’s impact on the diverse communities in Los Angeles County by bridging the gaps between basic, clinical and community-engaging researchers; providing cutting-edge tools to dissect new MASLD mechanisms; and recruiting, supporting and mentoring the next generation of MASLD researchers. We will leverage our critical mass of liver researchers, the UCLA environment and its legacy of treatment of liver diseases, and unparalleled resources and institutional support to realize our central goal of tackling the MASLD spectrum in our communities.
The keys to our action plan are discovery, inclusivity, outreach and sustainability. Accordingly, basic, clinical and community-based researchers at UCLA have teamed up with their counterparts at the City of Hope in Duarte, CA, and in our sister institutions, UC Irvine, and UC Davis. Together, we are a team of NIH-funded researchers and clinicians that constitute the Comprehensive Liver Research Center.
The center is led by multi-PI team of Dr. Rajat Singh, a clinically trained basic scientist, and Dr. Vatche G. Agopian, a liver transplant surgeon-scientist, and comprises two clinical cores, three cutting-edge biomedical research cores, an outreach core, a scientific catalyst program and pilot and feasibility funding.
In realizing the goals of the center, we will better understand the heterogeneity of MASLD across the various ethnic groups of Los Angeles County — thereby embracing ‘personalized hepatology’ and providing better health care to MASLD-spectrum patients.
Theme
The theme of the Comprehensive Liver Research Center at UCLA is 'Total MASLD,' to understand every aspect of this disease cluster so as to improve health outcomes in our diverse community riddled with this disease spectrum. To accomplish this goal, the center will focus on its five key tenets; diversity, outreach, basic-clinical integration, career development and comprehensive biobanking.
Diversity
It is critical to understand the impact of genetic and ethnic variation on the MASLD spectrum since mechanisms of onset and rates of progression of chronic liver disease of metabolic origin are significantly impacted by race, ethnicity and sex, and our communities are one of the most diverse within the U.S.
Outreach
One of the challenges towards understanding why certain populations are at the greatest risk of MASLD and its progression is poor engagement with/and recruitment of individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. The center provides for a robust Outreach Program whose mission is to target research efforts amongst diverse populations with unmet needs around the screening, diagnosis, and treatment of MASLD and ensure a patient-centered approach to recruitment and retention of underrepresented individuals for research.
Basic-clinical integration
A complete understanding of MASLD is not possible without interactions between basic scientists, clinicians and community-engaging researchers. The center stimulates close collaborations between these groups not only through its Enrichment Program and Pilot and Feasibility Program but also by leveraging its comprehensive biobanking initiative to capitalize on every opportunity to prospectively bank and widely dispense biospecimens and their clinical correlates from a diverse population of MASLD spectrum patients. These efforts have galvanized basic researchers and clinicians, allowing us to join forces to comprehensively tackle the MASLD problem.
Career development
A key focus of the center is to recruit, mentor and develop the next generation of liver researchers and clinicians. The center utilizes its various enrichment activities and pilot and feasibility funding opportunities to attract and mentor early career investigators and scientists and help them develop their independent liver research programs.