Lily Dara

MD

Dr. Lily Dara is an NIH-funded physician-scientist at the University of Southern California with a research interest in Drug-Induced Liver Injury and Autoimmune Liver Diseases. She is a graduate of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran. She completed Internal Medicine Residency at Griffin Hospital, a Yale-affiliated program in CT and Gastroenterology Fellowship at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She became interested in liver disease during her residency, she was particularly fascinated by Drug-Induced Liver Injury (DILI) and hepatotoxicity after seeing several cases of hepatotoxicity due to dietary and weight loss supplements. She joined the laboratory of Dr. Neil Kaplowitz during fellowship, where she studied the signaling mechanisms and cell death subroutines in the context of hepatotoxicity from acetaminophen-induced acute liver injury. She finished her post-doctoral fellowship in the Kaplowitz laboratory and started her own lab after obtaining her K08 from the NIDDK.

She is currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Medicine and studies mechanisms of liver injury and hepatotoxicity with a particular focus on immune checkpoint inhibitors using basic, animal model, and translational approaches. Clinically, she is interested in the complex presentation and difficult treatment of Autoimmune Hepatitis (AIH) and PBC and their variant syndromes, particularly in the underserved and minority Latinx populations in east Los Angeles.

She is currently a Drug-Induced Liver Injury Network (DILIN) co-Investigator at USC. Beyond her research and clinical work, she is an active member of the liver community. She serves on the editorial board of Gastroenterology and JHep reports, is a peer reviewer on the NIH’s LiverTox website Expert Review Committee, is a member of the AASLD Foundation Research Awards Committee Study Section, and Chair of the AASLD Hepatotoxicity Special Interest Group.

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