Sobia Nasir Laique, MD

With profound sadness, AASLD acknowledges the passing of Sobia Nasir Laique, MD. Dr. Laique was a transplant hepatologist, clinician scientist, mentor, and friend. Her loss is felt across the hepatology community. 

Born into a family devoted to medicine, with a father who practices gastroenterology in Pakistan, she was drawn to the field early. Dr. Laique earned her medical degree from Aga Khan University Medical College in Karachi, completed her Internal Medicine residency at Cleveland Clinic, and trained in Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Mayo Clinic Arizona and in Transplant Hepatology at Cleveland Clinic. In 2022, she joined the Cleveland Clinic faculty as a transplant hepatologist, and in the years that followed, she built a body of work that most of us would be proud to assemble over a full career. 

Her work centered on patients living with both liver disease and cardiometabolic disease. She envisioned, founded, and directed Cleveland Clinic's Multidisciplinary MASLD Clinic, an interprofessional model in which hepatology and its metabolic partner specialties co-manage patients rather than treat them in sequence, and was subsequently named Chair of the MASLD Task Force. Alongside her clinical work, she came into her own as an early career clinician scientist, and her research grew out of the problems she met in practice. She studied the cost-effectiveness of pharmacologic therapy for MASH with significant fibrosis, paired biopsy evidence that MASH-related cirrhosis can regress after metabolic and bariatric surgery, donor obesity, and MASLD as barriers to living donor liver transplantation, and the cardiometabolic health of transplant recipients. 

"She was extraordinarily talented, ambitious, thoughtful, and full of ideas. I truly believed she was going to become a leader in hepatology and change the way we deliver care." - Atoosa Rabiee, MD 

Medical students, residents, and fellows praised her as an outstanding teacher in every clinical setting she shared with them, and she gave the same focused attention to trainees in research. She cultivated a research group that spanned specialties and levels of training, from students to junior faculty, all of them direct products of her mentorship and her sponsorship. She taught her colleagues with the same energy, spearheading Cleveland Clinic's national Multidisciplinary MASH conference, the first educational summit dedicated to multidisciplinary MASH care. 

What truly distinguished Sobia was not only what she accomplished, but how she accomplished it. She was gifted, driven, and intellectually curious, and she carried all of it with a kindness and humility that never wavered. She was a tireless advocate for her patients, a generous collaborator, and an ally to women in medicine. As one of very few female transplant hepatologists from Pakistan, she became a role model for young women entering the field. She connected researchers and clinicians across institutions and across the world. Many of us met people we now count as close colleagues because Sobia decided we should know each other. 

"Her curiosity, insight, and unwavering commitment to excellence continually inspired me and everyone around her. In a field that can sometimes feel competitive, Sobia opened doors, shared opportunities, and celebrated the successes of others. She never sought personal recognition; instead, her instinct was always to lift those around her. The hepatology community has lost a shining star far too soon." - Bilal Hameed, MD, FAASLD

Above all, she was a wife to her devoted husband, Omar, and a mother to her beloved son, Adam. They were her highest purpose, and she would have wanted that said first. 

"Sobia was at the beginning of what many of us believed would be a remarkable journey. Grounded in her values and her Muslim faith, Sobia approached her future with optimism and determination. Adam will grow up surrounded by the memories of a mother who loved him deeply and had so much ahead of her. I hope one day he will know how highly she was regarded, how much promise we saw in her, and how many people will continue to keep her memory alive." - Mazen Noureddin, MD, MHSc, FAASLD 

She lives on in her son, in the patients she cared for, the programs she built, and the trainees she inspired. She will be deeply missed by her family, her colleagues, and her friends around the world, and we honor her by continuing the work she started. 

A fund has been established to support Adam. Contributions may be made at: https://www.launchgood.com/v4/campaign/in_memory_of_sobia_a_legacy_of_love_for_her_son

Please share your memories of Sobia at www.SobiaLaique.com, a place for her family, and especially for Adam, to come to know her through the people whose lives she touched. 

Written by: 
Christina C. Lindenmeyer, MD   
Bilal Hameed, MD, FAASLD
Mazen Noureddin, MD, MHSc, FAASLD   
Atoosa Rabiee, MD