Scott L. Friedman is an American scientist, professor and physician who works in the field of hepatology.
Background
Friedman was born in Brooklyn, New New York His father was a medical doctor whose specialty was Radiology, and his mother was a high school business education teacher. From the age of five, he grew up in North Woodmere on Long Island, New York and attended public schools in the Hewlett-Woodmere School District #14.
Education
He attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, leaving at the end of his junior year to begin medical school at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Friedman returned to Rensselaer in June 1976 and graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science degree, and he received his medical degree from Mount Sinai in 1979.
Career
Friedman has conducted pioneering research into the underlying causes of scarring, or fibrosis, associated with chronic liver disease, by characterizing the key fibrogenic cell type, the hepatic stellate cell His laboratory has also discovered a novel tumor suppressor gene, KLF6 that is inactivated in a number of human cancers including primary liver cancer. Friedman is the Fishberg Professor of Medicine, and Chief of the Division of Liver Diseases, Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New New York At age 24, Friedman began postgraduate training in Internal Medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Master of Arts. Later he completed a fellowship in Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases at the University of California, San Francisco (University of California, San Francisco) School of Medicine, where he was appointed to the faculty in 1986.
lieutenant was at University of California, San Francisco that Friedman became the first scientist to isolate the hepatic stellate cell, which is responsible for hepatic fibrosis, a scarring process that can lead to cirrhosis of the liver.
In 1997, Friedman returned to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine where he has held the positions of Fishberg Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Liver Diseases. He assumed a major leadership role in the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), serving as a Governing Board member (2005–2010) and President (2009).
Beginning in 1985 with Friedman"s description of the role of the hepatic stellate cell in liver fibrosis, his laboratory at University of California, San Francisco and then at Mount Sinai has conducted novel studies that have advanced the understanding of liver disease. These studies have been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health for 25 years.
One of his laboratory"s other key discoveries is a novel tumor suppressor gene, KLF6, which is inactivated in a number of human cancers, including primary liver cancer.
Friedman took a sabbatical in 1995 to become a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, conducting research in the laboratory of Professor Moshe Oren. He has authored over 300 scientific articles, and he has served as mentor to over 50 students, physicians, and postdoctoral trainees.