Roberto Gedaly, MD, FACS

Roberto Gedaly is a practicing transplant surgeon and clinician-scientist who has earned both national and international recognition for his work with infectious complications, including hepatitis and patients undergoing liver resection and liver transplantation. His research has focused on immunosuppressive strategies in liver transplantation. His currently seeks to define markers and prognostic indicators of hepatocellular carcinoma in an attempt to determine more effective therapies.

After receiving a medical degree from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas, Venezuela in 1990, Gedaly completed his general surgery residency at the University Hospital of Caracas. He then completed a two-year fellowship in hepatobiliary and transplantation service at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center through the Harvard Medical School in Boston; a one-year fellowship in liver and GI transplantation at the Jackson Memorial Hospital at the University of Miami School of Medicine in Miami, Fla.; and a two-year fellowship in transplantation at the Methodist Hospital at the University of Tennessee in Memphis. Gedaly joined the University of Kentucky in 2006. He is actively engaged in medical and surgical societies, is a frequently invited guest speaker at meetings worldwide and has authored numerous publications appearing in leading peer-review journals and text books.

Faculty Rank

Dr. Gedaly is a Hepatobiliary and Transplant surgeon and Chief of the Abdominal Transplant section. He has extensive clinical expertise in the management of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma and a strong interest in basic science and clinical science research in the areas of hepatocellular carcinoma and other liver diseases as well as hepatocellular carcinoma markers and their impact on patient outcomes. Dr. Gedaly has published several articles in the fields of transplantation and hepatobiliary surgery, including, “Predictors of relapse to alcohol and illicit drugs after liver transplantation for alcoholic liver disease”. His work has reported the impact of obesity, diabetes, smoking and cancer on resource utilization in patients undergoing liver resection from a multicenter analysis of 1029 hepatectomies. In addition, he has reported the association of alpha-fetaprotein and tumor size with microvascular invasion in patients undergoing transplantation with hepatocellular carcinoma. Recently, Dr. Gedaly obtained promising results studying the function and mechanism of multi-kinase inhibitor sorafenib and dual PI3K and mTOR inhibitor PI-103 on inhibition of HCC in vitro and in a nude mice model. Over the last four years, his laboratory has studied the role of combination therapy while targeting significant pathways in HCC treatment. Most recently, his laboratory has studied the role of liver cancer stem cells in HCC treatment.