E. Donnall Thomas Prize Awarded

To Liver Researcher From Thailand

COOPERSTOWN – Dr. Karn Wijarnpreecha, who is researching liver disease, has been awarded the E. Donnall Thomas Outstanding Research Day Presentation Award, named in honor the former Bassett physician who won the Nobel Prize.

Wijarnpreecha, who is completing his medical training at Bassett, is investigating possible links between nonalcoholic fatty-liver disease, scarring of the liver and low muscle mass, and whether any link is consistent across ethnicities.  If so, “interventions to strengthen muscle mass may reduce the burden of NAFLD and advanced fibrosis,” the researcher said.

The prize-winner is an internal medicine resident in his third year of training at Bassett Hospital.  His research project and poster were among 12 presented as part of the E. Donnall Thomas Research Day. Moreover, this project helped him to achieve Young Investigator Bursary from the European Association for the Study of the Liver in 2018.

Wijarnpreecha worked on the study project with Donghee Kim, MD, PhD, division of gastroenterology, Stanford University, and Bassett mentor Dr. Pascale Raymond; and was also supported at Bassett by Dr. Edward Bischof, program director, internal medicine, and Melissa Scribani, MPH, statistician.

Wijarnpreecha earned his medical degree from Chiang Mai University, Thailand. After completing his residency at Bassett in June, he will start a gastroenterology fellowship training at Mayo Clinic Florida and after that begin a hepatology fellowship.

During his residency training at Bassett, Wijarnpreecha has been published 76 times, and was selected to be one of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) Emerging Liver Scholar and Ambassador recipients, which “reflect my interest and love of research in hepatology/gastroenterology.”

The award is named in honor of E. Donnall Thomas, Bassett’s physician-in-chief from 1955 to 1963. He was awarded the 1990 Nobel in Medicine for his pioneering work in bone marrow transplantation, which he began at Bassett. Thomas performed the world’s first human bone marrow transplant at Bassett in 1956.