Bruce R. Bacon, MD is the James F. King, MD Endowed Chair in Gastroenterology and Professor of Internal Medicine, in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine. He came to Saint Louis University in June 1990 and was the Director of the Division until stepping down in June of 2010. Since 2000, he has been Co-Director of the Saint Louis University Liver Center with Dr. Adrian M. Di Bisceglie.

Dr. Bacon’s undergraduate work was done at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio, and his medical degree and training were obtained at Case Western University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. He is a former President of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in 2004, the former Chair of the Subspecialty Board on Gastroenterology for the American Board of Internal Medicine, and the former Chair of the Subspecialty Board on Transplant Hepatology for the ABIM. He is an Associate Editor for Gastroenterology and Editor-in-Chief for Current Hepatitis Reports. In addition to a large clinical practice, he has been either the Principal Investigator or Collaborating Investigator on a large number of NIH-sponsored grants and is the Principal Investigator on numerous studies funded by the pharmaceutical industry. He has authored or co-authored over 300 articles, reviews and chapters in highly respected journals and is a co-editor of the textbooks Liver Disease: Diagnosis and Management and Comprehensive Clinical Hepatology.

He has had an extensive research interest in hepatic iron metabolism and was a member of the research team which discovered the gene for hemochromatosis, HFE, in 1996. He has had extensive experience in a variety of laboratory research protocols involving experimental iron overload, iron-induced hepatotoxicity, iron-induced organelle damage, and the role of iron in fibrogenesis. He was continuously funded by the NIH from 1982 to 2007 for work on iron-induced hepatotoxicity and hepatic fibrogenesis. His primary focus at the present time is predominantly in clinical hepatology in the field of hemochromatosis and iron overload, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, and chronic hepatitis B and C.