Aiwu Ruth He, MD, PhD: Bridging the Lab and the Clinic to Transform Liver Cancer Care
Aiwu Ruth He, MD, PhD, recently joined Columbia University Irving Medical Center as the Director of Hepatobiliary Cancers in the Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology, as well as the Director of Liver Transplant Oncology at the Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation.
We caught up with her to talk about how she’s bridging the gap between lab and clinic, expanding liver cancer clinical trials, and exploring innovative approaches- including CAR T therapy and transplant oncology- to improve outcomes for patients with liver cancer.
From bench to bedside, and back again
Can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to focus on liver cancer?
After graduation from medical school in China, I came to the United States to pursue a PhD in biochemistry, studying drug resistance in leukemia. My postdoctoral research at the NIH actually focused on type 2 diabetes, where I studied the role of specific genes in disease development and learned firsthand how basic science discoveries can ultimately inform clinical care: a lesson that continues to guide my work in liver cancer today. Over time, I realized that while I loved science, I missed patient care.
I went back for my internal medicine residency and completed a hematology/oncology fellowship at Georgetown. That’s where I was first introduced to liver cancer research and joined a lab developing animal models for hepatocellular carcinoma. I eventually built my own lab, but as my clinical trial work grew, I transitioned fully into clinical research.
You’ve said that your PhD training made you a better clinician. In what ways?
There’s a real satisfaction in seeing prolonged survival and knowing you’re making a difference.
As a clinical researcher, you’re standing on the shoulders of giants when doing translational work. You take discoveries that scientists have worked on for years and bring them into patient care, improving outcomes- that’s the truly rewarding part.
The different ways of thinking helped me too. As a researcher, you need to be very logical and methodical- you can’t skip steps. As a physician, you’re collecting and sifting through vast amounts of information, then quickly narrowing it down and making decisions in real time. It’s a very different mindset- having training in both helps you focus on what’s practical, what can actually be done, and what the data really mean when applied to patient care, especially given the heterogeneity in tumor biology.
Building a comprehensive liver cancer program at Columbia
What drew you to Columbia for this next chapter?
What stood out about Columbia was the chance to expand translational work while building a comprehensive liver cancer program that brings together top-tier basic science and innovative clinical research.
Columbia is investing heavily in hepatobiliary research and fostering a truly multidisciplinary approach integrating surgery, hepatology, oncology, and transplantation.
It’s the perfect environment to make a real impact.
What are your initial goals in your new roles as director of hepatobiliary cancer and liver transplant oncology?
We want to build on our existing strengths: a living donor transplant program, excellent surgeons, a strong hepatology team, and talented basic researchers. My goal is to expand our clinical trial portfolio across multiple treatment lines, including both government-sponsored studies, collaborative studies with Pharma and innovative, hypothesis-driven trials emerging from the Columbia University laboratory discoveries.
From a health equity standpoint- Columbia serves a uniquely diverse patient population. I’m collaborating with HICCC's Community Outreach and Engagement (COE) team to explore opportunities for research on health disparities and serve the community more effectively.
You’ve mentioned a growing interest in transplant oncology. What does that entail?
Cancer is a known risk after organ transplantation due to the long-term immunosuppression required to prevent rejection, which also reduces the immune system’s ability to detect and eliminate cancer cells. Additionally, as transplant recipients live longer, age-related cancers may also develop.
Cancer management in patients with a history of organ transplants is usually different from those without, given the need to balance effective therapy with the risks of graft rejection and immunosuppression.
Columbia likely manages more multi-organ transplant patients than any other center, which gives us a unique opportunity to study and treat this population. These patients present special challenges because their immune systems are different from non-transplant patients, which affects how we manage their care. It’s a complex problem, but Columbia has top-notch researchers working on it, which makes it an intellectually exciting area.
In hepatobiliary cancers, transplant oncology is about expanding curative options. Living donor transplants allow more younger, healthy patients to benefit, while minimizing oncologic risk. We’re also exploring the best downstage strategies, and biomarkers to better predict which patients are most likely to benefit from transplant.
Overall, transplant oncology is still a relatively new field, and as treatments and technology advance, we’re discovering safer ways to expand transplant eligibility.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the future of liver cancer research at Columbia?
I’m excited by the momentum here and the chance to collaborate with world-renowned scientists I’ve only read about before.
For example, we hope to collaborate with the Columbia Initiative in Cell Engineering and Therapy (CICET), led by Michel Sadelain, MD, PhD, a pioneer in T-cell engineering and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapy whose work has transformed the treatment of hematologic malignancies and led to multiple FDA-approved cellular therapies.
We are now exploring how to apply these innovations to hepatobiliary cancers. The field is still very new, and there are fascinating markers and targets we’re just beginning to study. Being at Columbia, I’m literally next door to some of the pioneers I once only knew through papers, which makes this an incredibly energizing environment for translational research. The opportunity to move discoveries from the lab to the clinic-and ultimately improve outcomes for our patients-is what drives me every day.
