Large Animal Models in Liver Transplantation: Interview with Dr. Johnny Hong 

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By Ann Haran, AASLD Staff

Congratulations to Johnny C. Hong, MD, FACS, the 2009 recipient of the AASLD Career Development Award in Liver Transplantation in Memory of the University of Michigan Transplant Team. This award is intended to foster career development for an individual performing clinical and/or translational research in the field of liver transplantation and who has shown commitment to excellence in the field at an early stage of his or her career. The award is designed to support a junior faculty member in the development of liver transplant research so that further funding can be obtained. This year’s award will help sponsor Dr. Hong’s research project entitled Regulated Reperfusion: A Novel Strategy to Mitigate Hepatic Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury in a Swine Model.

After starting his initial surgical training at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute in the Philippines, Dr. Hong moved to Houston to complete his general surgery residency and transplant immunology fellowship at the University of Texas Health Science Center. He then relocated to his current institution, the University of California Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he conducted a clinical fellowship in multi-organ transplantation. Dr. Hong’s main interests include ischemia reperfusion injury, transplant immunology, and liver cancer.

Dr. Hong’s current research focuses on the large animal model for ischemia and reperfusion injury, as he works towards establishing a swine model for liver transplantation in hopes of developing a novel therapeutic intervention for resuscitation of “marginal” quality organs (livers) that can be of applicability in human liver transplantation. He points out that “between 1600 and 2000 human donated livers are discarded every year due to poor or marginal quality,” and the strategies that salvage these organs will save more human lives. Other areas of research include cholangiocarcinoma, HCC, and partial graft liver transplantation from living and deceased donors. 

As is often the case, insufficient funding presents one of the biggest challenges Dr. Hong faces in furthering his research, especially due to the high costs involved in large animal models. His award money will allow him to continue working on this project, and he receives a great deal of support from his institution, UCLA, as well. Dr. Hong hopes to eventually obtain NIH funding for large animal studies in liver resuscitation, as working with large animal models can prove to be quite expensive.

Dr. Hong finds the most rewarding part of his career, to date, to be the opportunity to perform transplants on patients who are near death, as these “patients are given a second life.” He states the organ donors are the unsung heroes for the gift of life to our patients. He spends a great deal of time working in his research laboratory and clinics, and is happy to state that “my wife and three perfect kids are my driving force.”

Support of the AASLD Career Development Award in Liver Transplantation in Memory of the University of Michigan Transplant Team by Astellas USA Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.