A free, structured hepatology curriculum built by a transplant hepatologist — for medical students who want to learn the liver well before residency.
LIMES™ — Liver and Intestinal Medical Education for Students — is a structured, free curriculum in hepatology and liver transplant medicine for medical students at any stage of training.
The liver is the second largest organ in the body and the site of pathology in conditions that affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide: metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), viral hepatitis, alcohol-related liver disease, autoimmune conditions, and hepatocellular carcinoma. Despite this burden, hepatology receives disproportionately little coverage in most standard US medical school curricula — often limited to a single lecture on liver function tests and a passing mention of cirrhosis complications.
The result: medical students graduate without the foundational hepatology knowledge that internists, family physicians, emergency physicians, and surgeons need daily. The recognition of signs of advanced liver disease, the interpretation of abnormal liver enzymes, the understanding of what the MELD score means and why it matters — these are not specialty-specific skills. They are core clinical competencies.
LIMES™ was built to fill that gap. Eight structured topics take you from the fundamentals — how to take a liver history, how to perform a liver-focused physical exam — through core disease (cirrhosis and its complications), scoring systems (the full MELD 3.0 story), supportive care (nutrition, which carries independent prognostic weight), and transplant medicine (indications, evaluation, intestinal failure).
Each topic includes a clinical deep dive connecting the content to real decision-making. The curriculum is designed to be used across all four years of medical school, as background reading, pre-rotation preparation, or as the foundation for a research or enrichment track in hepatology.
LIMES™ was created by Faruq Pradhan, MBBCh, FRCPC, a transplant hepatologist and educator. Dr. Pradhan's clinical and educational work is focused on advancing hepatology training at the medical student level — a gap he has studied through original survey research, national task force participation, and hands-on curriculum development.
Dr. Pradhan serves on the educational subcommittee of the Liver & Intestinal Community of Practice (LICOP) of the American Society of Transplantation (AST), through which he has worked to expand medical student access to hepatology education, conference funding, and mentorship. He is a co-author on the AST Fellows Task Force report published in the American Journal of Transplantation (2025), which cited the need for early and sustained medical student exposure to transplant medicine as a priority for the field.
He is the Faculty Director of the Combined Medical and Surgical Integrated Track in Liver Transplantation at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) — a four-year Enhanced Medical Education Track (EMET) for medical students interested in hepatology and liver transplantation that was cited in the Kobashigawa et al. (2025) AST Task Force report as a national model for medical student transplant education.
LIMES™ represents the next step: making that curriculum framework freely available to students and educators across institutions, and building the foundation for a broader network of hepatology enrichment in medical education.
LIMES™ is actively growing. If you are a medical student interested in hepatology or liver transplantation, an educator interested in implementing a hepatology curriculum or enrichment track at your institution, or an organization interested in the LIMES™ curriculum framework — we'd like to hear from you.
Reach out directly:
liver@fpradhan.comLIMES™ is an educational resource for medical students. The content presented is intended for learning purposes and does not constitute medical advice or clinical guidance. Clinical decisions should always be made in the context of a full patient evaluation and in accordance with current institutional and society guidelines. Content is reviewed periodically but may not reflect the most recent guideline updates. Consult current AASLD, EASL, ESPEN, or OPTN guidelines for clinical practice.
LIMES™ is a trademark. All content is original and the intellectual property of the creator unless otherwise cited.