Simon W. Beaven, MD, PhD

Dr. Beaven attended Stanford University where he majored in mathematics with honors in humanities. He went on to receive his MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and received the Dean’s Research Prize for work he performed in the laboratory of Dr. Scott Friedman under a Howard Hughes Medical Student Research Fellowship. Dr. Beaven completed internal medicine residency training at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. He came to UCLA in 2003 as a fellow in digestive diseases where he completed his gastroenterology fellowship. During this period, Dr. Beaven continued his research training and received a PhD with Dr. Peter Tontonoz in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Pathology. His doctoral work focused on cholesterol and lipid metabolism as it pertains to an important clinical problem: the metabolic syndrome. His research interests include nuclear receptor signaling and the relationship of inflammation to lipid metabolism during chronic liver injury.

Dr. Beaven is presently the chief of gastroenterology and hepatology at the Olive View - UCLA Medical Center. At his clinic in the Pfleger Liver Institute on the UCLA Westwood Campus he sees patients with all types of liver diseases including fatty liver [non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) or non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH)], viral hepatitis (HAV, HBV, HCV), autoimmune diseases of the liver [autoimmune hepatitis (AIH), primary biliary cholangitis (PBC), and primary sclerosis cholangitis (PSC)] and metabolic liver diseases (hemochromatosis, Wilson disease, alpha-1- antitrypsin deficiency). Patients with fatty liver are often seen in conjunction with our multi-disciplinary group, COMET (Center for Obesity and Metabolic Health), as we are able to offer an integrated approach to treating the metabolic syndrome including bariatric surgery. Additionally, Dr. Beaven has a particular interest in rare diseases of the liver and gastrointestinal tract. He is a representative of the American Porphyria Foundation and sees patients with all types of porphyria.