R. Mark Ghobrial, MD, PhD

J.C. Walter Jr. Presidential Distinguished Chair, Director, J.C. Walter Jr. Transplant Center
Professor of Surgery, Academic Institute
Full Member, Research Institute
Houston Methodist
Weill Cornell Medical College


Sherrie and Alan Conover Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation


Biography

After receiving his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees from Cairo University Medical School in Cairo, Egypt, Dr. Ghobrial completed several surgical residencies in the United Kingdom and the United States. While a surgery resident at University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, Texas, he completed a PhD in Immunology at the UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 1994. After residency, he accepted a position as clinical instructor in the Department of Surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and was awarded a Dumont-UCLA Transplant Fellowship. He received his full professorship in 2005 and served as Director of the Pancreas Transplant Program and Living Donor Liver Transplantation, and Service Director for Liver, Pancreas, and Small Bowel Transplantation. He was recruited to the Houston Methodist Hospital in 2008.

Description of Research

One of the primary goals of Dr. Ghobrial´s research is to increase donor tolerance to organ transplants and allografts. Dr. Ghobrial has shown in preclinical studies that tolerizing the host to dominant donor epitopes induces tolerance in the recipient. By engineering chimeric proteins, or proteins that contain sequences from both donor and recipient, and exposing the recipient to these proteins prior to tissue graft, peripheral, long-term tolerance is induced. Dr. Ghobrial also has a long-standing interest in the effects of Hepatitis (B and C) on transplantation patients.

Areas Of Expertise

Liver resection Transplantation Hepatocellular carcinoma Liver transplant Liver disease
Education & Training

Clinical Fellowship, Dumont-UCLA Transplant Center
MD, University of Cairo Medical School
Residency, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
PhD, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Publications

Memory Macrophages
Kloc, M, Kubiak, JZ, Zdanowski, R & Ghobrial, RM 2023, , International journal of molecular sciences, vol. 24, no. 1, 38. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms24010038

Outcomes in liver transplant recipients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease-related HCC: results from the US multicenter HCC transplant consortium
US Multicenter HCC Transplant Consortium 2023, , Liver transplantation : official publication of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 34-47. https://doi.org/10.1097/LVT.0000000000000007

Ox40-Cre-mediated deletion of BRD4 reveals an unexpected phenotype of hair follicle stem cells in alopecia
Wen, M, Ying, Y, Xiao, X, Arnold, PR, Wang, G, Chu, X, Ghobrial, RM & Li, XC 2022, , JCI insight, vol. 7, no. 23, e164534. https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.164534

Early Liver Transplantation for Severe Alcohol-Associated Hepatitis and a History of Prior Liver Decompensation
Weinberg, EM, Dukewich, M, Jakhete, N, Stonesifer, E, Im, GY, Lucey, MR, Shetty, K, Rice, JP, Victor, DW, Ghobrial, MR, Shetty, A, Rutledge, SM, Florman, SS, Hsu, C, Shoreibah, M, Aryan, M, Orandi, BJ, Han, H, Terrault, N & Lee, BP 2022, , American Journal of Gastroenterology, vol. 117, no. 12, pp. 1990-1998. https://doi.org/10.14309/ajg.0000000000001901

COVID-19 mortality may be reduced among fully vaccinated solid organ transplant recipients
Sandoval, M, Nguyen, DT, Huang, HJ, Yi, SG, Ghobrial, RM, Gaber, AO & Graviss, EA 2022, , PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 12 December, e0279222. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279222

Hospitalization and survival of solid organ transplant recipients with coronavirus disease 2019: A propensity matched cohort study
Swan, JT, Rizk, E, Jones, SL, Nwana, N, Nicolas, JC, Tran, AT, Xu, J, Nisar, T, Menser, T, Yi, SG, Moore, LW, Huang, HJ, Ghobrial, RM, Gaber, AO & Knight, RJ 2022, , PLoS ONE, vol. 17, no. 12 December, e0278781. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278781

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: The role of liver transplantation, adjunctive treatments, and prognostic biomarkers
Connor, AA, Kodali, S, Abdelrahim, M, Javle, MM, Brombosz, EW & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , Frontiers in Oncology, vol. 12, 996710. https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2022.996710

Novel Benchmark Values for Redo Liver Transplantation: Does the Outcome Justify the Effort?
Abbassi, F, Gero, D, Muller, X, Bueno, A, Figiel, W, Robin, F, Laroche, S, Picard, B, Shankar, S, Ivanics, T, van Reeven, M, van Leeuwen, OB, Braun, HJ, Monbaliu, D, Breton, A, Vachharajani, N, Bonaccorsi Riani, E, Nowak, G, McMillan, RR, Abu-Gazala, S, Nair, A, Bruballa, R, Paterno, F, Weppler Sears, D, Pinna, AD, Guarrera, JV, de Santibañes, E, de Santibañes, M, Hernandez-Alejandro, R, Olthoff, K, Ghobrial, RM, Ericzon, BG, Ciccarelli, O, Chapman, WC, Mabrut, JY, Pirenne, J, Müllhaupt, B, Ascher, NL, Porte, RJ, de Meijer, VE, Polak, WG, Sapisochin, G, Attia, M, Soubrane, O, Weiss, E, Adam, RA, Cherqui, D, Boudjema, K, Zieniewicz, K, Jassem, W, Dutkowski, P & Clavien, PA 2022, , Annals of surgery, vol. 276, no. 5, pp. 860-867. https://doi.org/10.1097/SLA.0000000000005634

Macrophage-, Dendritic-, Smooth Muscle-, Endothelium-, and Stem Cells-Derived Foam Cells in Atherosclerosis
Kloc, M, Kubiak, JZ & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , International journal of molecular sciences, vol. 23, no. 22, 14154. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms232214154

Predicting a Positive Antibody Response after 2 SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccines in Transplant Recipients: A Machine Learning Approach with External Validation
Alejo, JL, Mitchell, J, Chiang, TPY, Chang, A, Abedon, AT, Werbel, WA, Boyarsky, BJ, Zeiser, LB, Avery, RK, Tobian, AAR, Levan, ML, Warren, DS, Massie, AB, Moore, LW, Guha, A, Huang, HJ, Knight, RJ, Gaber, AO, Ghobrial, RM, Garonzik-Wang, JM, Segev, DL & Bae, S 2022, , Transplantation, vol. 106, no. 10, pp. E452-E460. https://doi.org/10.1097/TP.0000000000004259

Are short-term complications associated with poor allograft and patient survival after liver transplantation? A systematic review of the literature and expert panel recommendations
the ERAS4OLT.org Working Group: Claus Niemann, San Francisco, CA, USA, Joerg-Matthias Pollok, London, UK, Marina Berenguer, Valencia, Spain, Shahi Abdul Ghani, London, UK and Ka Siu Fan, London, UK 2022, , Clinical Transplantation, vol. 36, no. 10, e14704. https://doi.org/10.1111/ctr.14704

Combined liver transplant and sleeve gastrectomy: report of a brief-interval staged approach
Tariq, N, Saharia, A, Nwokedi, U, Hobeika, MJ, Mobley, CM, Hsu, D, Potter, LM, Moore, LW, Elaileh, A, Sherman, V & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , Liver Transplantation. https://doi.org/10.1002/lt.26560

Giant Multinucleated Cells in Aging and Senescence—An Abridgement
Kloc, M, Uosef, A, Subuddhi, A, Kubiak, JZ, Piprek, RP & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , Biology, vol. 11, no. 8, 1121. https://doi.org/10.3390/biology11081121

Liver transplantation and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: time to go forward again?
Kodali, S, Saharia, A & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , Current opinion in organ transplantation, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 320-328. https://doi.org/10.1097/MOT.0000000000000983

Liver transplantation and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma: Time to go forward again?
Kodali, S, Saharia, A & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , Current opinion in organ transplantation, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 320-328. https://doi.org/10.1097/MOT.0000000000000983

Graft and Patient Survival after Liver Transplantation
Yi, S, Mobley, CM & Ghobrial, RM 2022, . in P Burra (ed.), Textbook of Liver Transplantation. Springer, pp. 433-448.

Gemcitabine Plus Cisplatin Versus Non-Gemcitabine and Cisplatin Regimens as Neoadjuvant Treatment for Cholangiocarcinoma Patients Prior to Liver Transplantation: An Institution Experience
Abdelrahim, M, Esmail, A, Xu, J, Umoru, G, Al-Rawi, H, Saharia, A, Abudayyeh, A, Victor, D, McMillan, R, Kodali, S & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , Frontiers in Oncology, vol. 12, 908687. https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2022.908687

Natural genetic engineering: A programmed chromosome/DNA elimination
Kloc, M, Kubiak, JZ & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , Developmental Biology, vol. 486, pp. 15-25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2022.03.008

Monocyte–Macrophage Lineage Cell Fusion
Kloc, M, Subuddhi, A, Uosef, A, Kubiak, JZ & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , International journal of molecular sciences, vol. 23, no. 12, 6553. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms23126553

Immunotherapy as a Neoadjuvant Therapy for a Patient with Hepatocellular Carcinoma in the Pretransplant Setting: A Case Report
Abdelrahim, M, Esmail, A, Umoru, G, Westhart, K, Abudayyeh, A, Saharia, A & Ghobrial, RM 2022, , Current Oncology, vol. 29, no. 6, 4267, pp. 4267-4273. https://doi.org/10.3390/curroncol29060341