Maria T. Abreu, MD

Maria T. Abreu obtained her medical degree through the honors program in medical education at the University of Miami School of Medicine. While in medical school, she served as Student Council President and was inducted into the Iron Arrow Honor Society—the highest honor at the University of Miami. After completing her medical degree, she did her internship and residency in medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, followed by a clinical and research fellowship in gastroenterology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Following her fellowship, she obtained further postdoctoral training in molecular and cancer biology at UCLA.

Her first independent research laboratory was at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where she served as Director of Basic and Translational Research. Dr. Abreu was then recruited to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York where she served as Director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center. While at Mount Sinai, Dr. Abreu started the largest effort there to date to create an inflammatory bowel disease database and tissue repository that collected over 2,000 samples in a two-year period. In 2008, Dr. Abreu began her current position as Chief of Gastroenterology and Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. She is the Martin Kalser Chair in Gastroenterology.

A Diplomate of the National Board of Medical Examiners, The American Board of Internal Medicine, and the American Board of Gastroenterology, Dr. Abreu holds key positions with several professional societies. She is the chair of the Underrepresented Minorities Committee of the AGA; vice chair of the Immunology, Microbiology & Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IMIBD) Section of the AGA Institute Council; and is a member of the AGA Public Affairs and Advisory Committee. Dr. Abreu is on the Women’s Committee of the ACG. She is an active member of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) and is on the board of the Florida Chapter of the CCFA. In 2009, Dr. Abreu was recognized by the CCFA Florida Chapter for her education, support, and advocacy and in 2010 was the recipient of the chapter’s Hope Award for her dedication to the treatment of patients with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. She was recently selected co-director of the 2011 Spring Post Graduate course for the AGA and was also named president-elect of the Florida Gastroenterology Society. Dr. Abreu was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 2010, an honor society for physician-scientists. She is listed in Castle and Connelly as one of America’s Top Doctors and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and the American Gastroenterological Association.

Dr. Abreu has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, books, chapters and reviews. She serves on the editorial board of Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and GI & Hepatology News, an AGA-sponsored publication. Dr. Abreu is an editor for the Journal of Immunology and is a reviewer for Gastroenterology and Nature Medicine, in addition to many other journals. She is a standing member of the NIH Gastrointestinal Mucosal Pathobiology Study Section (GMPB) and is a member of the CCFA Research Initiatives Committee. Her research interest is host-bacterial interactions and, in particular, the role of toll-like receptor signaling in intestinal inflammation and colon cancer. Her translational work has focused on genotype-phenotype relationships in inflammatory bowel disease and prediction of response to medical therapies. Dr. Abreu is a frequent speaker at national and international symposia on basic science and clinical topics.