Craig McClain, MD, Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology & Toxicology, Distinguished University Scholar, Associate Vice President for Translational Research, Associate Vice President for Health Affairs/Research at the University of Louisville. He is a widely recognized expert in alcohol-related liver injury/disease, nutrition, and cytokine research. He is also a practicing hepatologist. His laboratory currently focuses on nutrition and the gut:liver axis as it relates to alcohol-associated liver disease. He has had continuous federal funding as PI for his research since 1977. Dr. McClain has made many seminal research contributions. In an early study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 1980, he described the deleterious interactions in the liver between alcohol and acetaminophen. In another important study, published in Hepatology in 1989, Dr. McClain was the first to describe dysregulated cytokines in alcohol-associated hepatitis. His group was also the first to describe toxicant-associated steatohepatitis (TASH—Hepatology, 2010). Since 2000, Dr. McClain and colleagues have published multiple translational and mechanistic studies on the ability of zinc, and probiotics such as Lactobacillus, to protect against intestinal dysbiosis and liver injury. All told, Dr. McClain has published over 550 peer-reviewed articles and over 110 book chapters and reviews. He is currently funded for his research by multiple grants from the NIH and VA, including being PI on an NIH-funded Alcohol Research Center (P50) and an NIH-funded Hepatobiology & Toxicology COBRE Center (P20).
Dr. McClain has received many awards and honors, including the Grace A. Goldsmith Award in Nutrition from the American College of Nutrition, the American Gastroenterology Association Foundation Research Mentoring Award, and the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award for mentoring. He has mentored over 135 medical students, residents, GI fellows, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, including more than 35 junior faculty members with over 40 K-type career development awards. He is senior author on the just-published American College of Gastroenterology Clinical Practice Guidelines on Malnutrition and Liver Disease. Dr. McClain was honored to give the Mark Keller Honorary Lecture at NIAAA in 2014. Dr. McClain is also Past President of the American College of Nutrition. He was the first physician member of the NIH Peer Review Advisory Committee (PRAC) and completed terms on the National Advisory Council for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and on the NIH Council of Councils.
