News Release
UB Department of Medicine Names Head of Gastroenterology Division
![[ photograph ]](http://www.buffalo.edu/news/hires/talal_andrew.jpg)
Andrew H. Talal, MD, MPH, has been named chief of the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition.Download JPEG
Release Date: July 17, 2012
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Andrew H. Talal, MD, MPH, associate professor at the Weill Cornell Medical College has been named chief of the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition in the University at Buffalo’s Department of Medicine; he also has been wp-contentointed UB professor of medicine.
The announcement was made by Anne B. Curtis, MD, Charles and Mary Bauer Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine in UB’s School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Talal will join UB in September, when Thomas Mahl, MD, clinical professor, who recently served as interim chief, steps down; previously Michael Sitrin, MD, professor, had been leading the division.
Talal has an international reputation for his clinical and translational work in hepatology, the branch of medicine that deals with the liver, gallbladder, biliary tree and pancreas, and management of these disorders. He has been recognized as an authority on viral hepatitis in HIV-infected individuals. A board-certified gastroenterologist and hepatologist, he is a physician-scientist in the Center for the Study of Hepatitis C, a consortium between Rockefeller University, Weill Cornell Medical College and New York Presbyterian Hospital.
His research interests include: the development of biomarkers of the progression and treatment outcomes in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection; the evaluation of hepatitis C virus-specific immune responses in injection drug users; treatment outcomes in special populations infected with hepatitis C virus (HIV/HCV co-infection, methadone maintenance, patients with bleeding disorders and thalassemia); and novel treatments for hepatitis C.
Talal currently is conducting research funded by such federal agencies as the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control on HCV evaluation and treatment among patients in drug treatment programs and risk factors for AIDS among IV drug users.
Talal was the recipient of a Clinton Global Initiatives award from the W.J. Clinton Foundation in 2006, which fostered the development of treatment algorithms for hepatitis viruses B and C.
Talal earned his MD from the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and received his MPH from the University of North Carolina. He completed his medical residency at the University of Iowa and research and clinical fellowships in gastroenterology at the University of North Carolina.
Before joining the Weill Cornell Medical College, he was a research associate and clinical scholar at the Rockefeller University in New York.