BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Joseph Bloomer, M.D., professor of medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and director of the Liver Center at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), has received the 2009 Distinguished Service Award from the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

The AASLD Distinguished Service Award is given to an individual in honor of his or her sustained service to AASLD and/or the liver disease community in general.

Bloomer has served on seven committees of AASLD, even chairing the first research committee and chairing the task force for certificate of added qualification in transplant hepatology from 1997 to 2001. He was AASLD president from 1998 to 1999.

Bloomer also is a nationally recognized expert in liver diseases. He has worked on several national clinical trials in a variety of liver disorders and has received National Institutes of Health (NIH) research support since 1976, including a MERIT Award from 1994-2002 to investigate the pathogenesis of clinical and biochemical features in the group of genetic disorders called porphyrias. His laboratory was the first to define the enzyme defects in two of these eight disorders, erythropoietic protoporphyria (EPP) and variegate porphyria, and the first to show that liver disease in EPP is caused by the toxic effect of the molecule protoporphyrin on liver structure and function.

Most recently, Bloomer's laboratory has demonstrated that symptomatic disease in EPP is associated with a mutation in one allele of a gene that causes a harmful change in its enzyme structure, together with a polymorphism in the other allele of the gene that causes low gene expression. Bloomer also has clinical trials under way in the study of efficacy of therapy for hepatitis B and C.

Bloomer earned his bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University, with research training in the NIH Metabolism Branch and a hepatology fellowship and faculty appointment at Yale University. Prior to joining the UAB faculty, he directed the University of Minnesota Division of Gastroenterology/Hepatology.

About UAB

The UAB Liver Center pioneers new treatments for liver and biliary tract disease. It offers specialized care through outpatient clinics and its inpatient hepatology service at UAB Hospital. The center also actively conducts clinical research activities. The UAB Liver Transplant Program has been ranked in the top 10 for patient-survival rates and has performed more than 1,200 transplants. The one-year survival rate is greater than 92 percent.