Mario Strazzabosco, MD, PhD

Mario Strazzabosco, MD, PhD, the director and clinical program leader of the Smilow Liver Cancer Program, specializes in the care of patients with liver cancers.

Dr. Strazzabosco enjoys forming lasting relationships with his patients, whom he continues to monitor after they’ve been diagnosed with liver cancer. He and his team are quick to diagnose a recurrence of the disease and treat the chronic liver diseases (like cirrhosis of any cause, fatty liver disease or biliary diseases) that can lead to liver cancer while maintaining as much “liver health” as possible.

“To be diagnosed with liver cancer is the beginning of a journey,” Dr. Strazzabosco says. “And it will be a long one. We'll be together for many, many miles."

Along the way, Dr. Strazzabosco ensures his patients receive coordinated care from the program’s team of experts, including medical oncologists, interventional radiologists, surgical oncologists, hepatologists, and transplantation surgeons. Together, these specialists work to offer a personalized care and to provide oncologic treatments while preserving the function of the liver.

If liver function cannot be preserved, and a liver transplant becomes the best option, Dr. Strazzabosco and his team work closely with the physicians and surgeons of the Yale New Haven Hospital Transplant Center.

What he enjoys most about the job is when patients come back to see him with a happy face. “That’s the best part of my work,” he says, “and that's an example where the program all together works in a coordinated fashion and generates a happy-ending story. It takes a village to provide care to these patients. Each specialist provides his or her part of the care in order to generate a happy face, or what doctors call a 'good outcome.'”

Dr. Strazzabosco is also a professor of medicine (digestive diseases) at Yale School of Medicine and deputy director of the Yale Liver Center. He conducts research on liver regeneration, liver cancer care and a rarer form of the cancer that starts in the bile ducts known as cholangiocarcinoma.