About Us

The clinical practice for inpatient services is almost exclusively located at Barnes-Jewish Hospital (BJH). We have a small inpatient practice at Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital, predominantly for inflammatory bowel disease patients requiring a brief hospital stay and who do not require 24/7 imaging or ICU monitoring.

Our outpatient practice includes BJH, BJWCH, MoBap, and South County locations as well as offsite locations at Cape Girardeau (1429 N Mount Auburn Rd, Cape Girardeau, MO 63701) for hepatology. We offer comprehensive services at BJH and BJWCH for the entire range of digestive and liver disorders including interventional endoscopy (pancreatico-biliary disorders), bariatric endoscopic procedures and clinic, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, hepatology, and general gastroenterology. The South county location offers clinics in inflammatory bowel disease, hepatology, general gastroenterology. The MoBap location is confined to services focusing on neurogastroenterology and esophageal dysfunction.

Among the key clinical programs is liver transplantation, directed by Kevin Korenblat, MD. The liver transplant program was co-organized by Jeffrey Crippin, MD in conjunction with Will Chapman, MD as a jointly run medical-surgical service.  Following Dr. Crippin’s tenure, Dr. Korenblat was appointed and currently serves as medical director. The liver transplant program has enjoyed robust growth over the last decade. We have seen enormous growth in our Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) program under the leadership of Matthew Ciorba, MD who was appointed Inflammatory Bowel Diseases Program Director in 2016. Over the last several years, the division has recruited several new clinical faculty, with a major impact in reducing wait times for new IBD patients from six months to 14 days. Within the IBD program, we established a new adolescent-to-adult transition program in conjunction with the Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. We also established an Advanced IBD Fellowship training program, initiated an annual CME course along with a quarterly IBD speaker series, and successfully attracted new philanthropic support. Our Interventional Endoscopy (IE) section has enjoyed great success as a Program of Excellence. The IE section has eight full-time faculty and has enjoyed steady growth with clinical volumes now exceeding 2000 EUS and 2000 ERCP procedures annually. Among the major successful programs in the IE section, is our bariatric endoscopy program whose activities have grown exponentially and is the only regional center to offer three FDA approved intragastric balloon systems along with Aspire, endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty and is an active site for three industry-sponsored studies of weight loss devices.

The division has three major areas of basic research interest among the 12 wet-lab based investigators, including:

1. Host-microbial interactions, inflammation and mucosal immunity. We are interested in understanding how the microbiome influences inflammation (including inflammatory bowel disease) as well as how the microbiome signals to the body in obesity to regulate energy metabolism.
2. Stem cells, epithelial renewal, paligenosis and cancer. We are also interested in how the various digestive organs (stomach, small and large intestine, liver, pancreas) develop normally and how we might take advantage of their regenerative capacity to engineer new tissue. We are also interested in how gastrointestinal and liver cancer arise and how these cancers can be treated. Most importantly, we are particularly excited about how advances in DNA and RNA sequencing and genome wide analysis can be transitioned to produce an effective personalized approach to cancer, particulary for recurrent or metastatic cancers.
3. Metabolic homeostasis, nutrient transport, and enterohepatic signaling. We are interested in understanding the dialog between intestinal and hepatic metabolic pathways that promote obesity development, particularly childhood obesity. Our long-range goals are to develop new personalized therapies to reverse the metabolic and systemic complications of obesity, particularly the fibrogenic complications of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Among our clinical research activities, we have significant programs addressing the role of intestinal inflammation in colorectal cancer progression and response to chemotherapy, as well as understanding the role of MR enterography in predicting outcomes in inflammatory bowel disease. We are also interested in understanding the pathways linking the development and progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disorder. (NAFLD) in patients with IBD. Our interventional endoscopy faculty is engaged in work focusing on outcomes of pancreatic cystic lesions and the utility of endoscopic ultrasound, as well as in developing educational guidelines for advanced trainees. In other work, our faculty is engaged in understanding barriers to colorectal cancer screening, advancing understanding of foregut motility disorders and the use of high-resolution manometry, clinical trials of novel biologics in intervention studies in NASH and in primary biliary cholangitis, and in clinical trials for viral hepatitis.

The division serves as the home for the Washington University Digestive Disease Research Core Center (DDRCC) (P30-DK 52574).  The DDRCC provides enabling technology through four cores (Administration, Advanced Imaging and Tissue Analysis, Precision Animal Models and Organoids and Gnotobiotic; Biobank).  The DDRCC has a robust membership of over 50 full and associate members who utilitize core services, supported by extramural digestive disease-related funding. The center coordinates a pilot and feasibility (PF) program, in general supporting junior faculty (track 1) with seed funding up to $30,000 annually.  Over the last 15 years (2005-2020), the return on investment for the PF program has been outstanding with an ROI of 29:1. In addition, the DDRCC organizes a regular research seminar series and career development program through an enrichment program that is integrated into the overall divisional research portfolio.

The division is committed to training future academic leaders in our specialty. Dr. Davidson is the PI of the T32 in academic gastroenterology which has two slots per year for gastroenterology fellows and two slots for predocs (total 4 slots). We are also committed to enhancing diversity and promoting the careers of underrepresented minority trainees. Over the last 15 years of our T-32 award, we have trained and matriculated seven URMs (21% of the total of 33 trainees). Over the last 10 years (2010-2020) 100% of our three-year, foundational GI fellowship graduates have matriculated into academic faculty positions and 17% have returned to Washington University School of Medicine. Over the last 10 years, our advanced hepatology fellowship has matriculated six fellows, five of whom (83%) are in academic positions, while our interventional fellowship has matriculated 16 fellows, 15 of whom (94%) are in academic positions.