Jihane N. Benhammou, MD, PhD

Dr. Benhammou completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, with a major in human biology. She then completed medical school at University of California, San Francisco with a thesis in molecular medicine. Before starting her internship at the University of California, Los Angeles in internal medicine, Dr. Benhammou participated in a two-year intramural program at the National Cancer Institutes studying functional genomics and hereditary forms of kidney cancer.

Dr. Benhammou went on to complete her internal medicine and gastroenterology training at UCLA. There, she received advanced research training in the UCLA Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) program and NIH T32, which supported her graduate studies in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology. Her doctoral dissertation addressed the clinical risk factors of MASLD hepatocellular carcinoma and the molecular mechanisms at play in MASLD pathogenesis. Following her PhD, Dr. Benhammou completed additional clinical training in transplant hepatology at UCLA.

Dr. Benhammou joined the digestive diseases and hepatology faculty at UCLA and Greater Los Angeles VA where she will care for patients with chronic liver disease before and after liver transplantation. She continues to pursue her research on MASLD-associated hepatocellular carcinoma using multi-pronged novel research tools. Her laboratory is within the Comprehensive Liver Research Center at UCLA where she collaborates with clinical, translational and basic scientists. She is board certified in internal medicine, gastroenterology and transplant hepatology.