Gyongyi Szabo

Dr. Gyongyi Szabo is the Mitchell T. Rabkin, MD Chair, Professor of Medicine and Faculty Dean at Harvard Medical School, and Chief Academic Officer at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Beth Israel Lahey Health (BILH). In this role, she leads all basic, translational and clinical research activities, innovation, education and faculty development for the BIDMC, a Harvard teaching hospital and for BILH, the second largest health care system in New England.

A physician scientist and an internationally known expert in liver immunology and inflammation, Szabo investigates the complex role of chronic inflammation in progression of liver diseases. Her laboratory studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms of inflammation and innate immunity in liver injury to identify therapeutic targets focused on non-alcoholic liver disease, NASH and alcoholic liver disease. Her investigations recently revealed the importance of micro- RNAs and extracellular vesicles in liver diseases.

She showed that exosomes can not only be biomarkers but also vehicles of inter-cellular and inter-organ communication. Her studies identified microRNA-122 as a central player in steatohepatitis and showed that miR-155 regulates exosome release. Earlier, her group discovered that Interferon Regulatory Factor 3 downstream from Toll-like receptor 4 regulates hepatocellular damage and represents a key molecule in alcoholic hepatitis.

Szabo’s group made the novel discovery that NLRP3 activation and the IL-1ß pathway are potential therapeutic targets in alcoholic hepatitis and NASH. Her translational studies with the use of IL-1 receptor antagonist in a preclinical model of alcoholic hepatitis provided basis for a subsequent first-time clinical trial in alcoholic hepatitis with IL-1 inhibition. She is the lead investigator on the AlcHeptNet NIH-supported multicenter clinical trial in alcoholic hepatitis.

She is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and fellow of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) and the American College of Physicians (ACP). She serves on advisory boards of several federal agencies, leading academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies. She also served on the Governing Board and as President of AASLD in 2015, and is the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of Hepatology Communications.