John Vierling, MD, FACP, FAASLD

Dr. Vierling is board certified in internal medicine and gastroenterology and was previously certified in Transplant Hepatology from 2006-2016. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, Fellow of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and an American Gastroenterology Association Fellow. He was the founding Medical Director of Liver Transplantation and Director of Hepatology and instrumental in the founding of the current liver transplant program at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He was subsequently the founding Medical Director of Liver Transplantation and Director of Hepatology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center/UCLA. After 10 years as Medical Director of Liver Transplantation, he became the Medical Director of Multi-Organ Transplantation at Cedars-Sinai/UCLA.

Dr. John M. Vierling directs Advanced Liver Therapies, a clinical research unit devoted to hepatobiliary diseases. He and his research staff are conducting phase 1-3 studies of diagnostics and therapies in chronic hepatitis B, chronic hepatitis C, primary biliary cirrhosis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, anti-fibrotic therapy to prevent cirrhosis, hepatic encephalopathy, and measurement of hepatocellular function using 13C-labeled compounds. Dr. Vierling’s primary research interests are the immunopathogenic mechanisms involved in hepatobiliary injury caused by viral infection, autoimmunity, alloimmunity, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. By emphasizing a “laboratory bench to bedside” philosophy, Dr. Vierling has also been active in the design and execution of clinical therapeutic trials of antiviral agents for treatment of hepatitis B and C infections in patients before and after liver transplantation, and trials of immunosuppressive drugs in liver transplantation and autoimmune liver diseases. Dr. Vierling’s basic science laboratory investigations have used murine models to study the immunopathogenesis of non-suppurative destructive cholangitis, which destroys bile ducts in primary biliary cirrhosis, an autoimmune liver disease, as well as in two alloimmune diseases, hepatic allograft rejection and chronic graft-versus-host disease. Dr. Vierling is the author of numerous research publications.