The research of Michael S. Torbenson, M.D., focuses on improving diagnosis and treatment of liver and biliary cancers. His goals are to develop and validate new pathology entities using high-quality data, DNA, plasma, serum, and liver and biliary cancer tissue biospecimens and xenografts from patients with hepatobiliary cancer. His laboratory was the first to describe CpG islands in the hepatitis B virus (HBV) genome and demonstrate viral gene regulation by methylation of viral DNA.

Dr. Torbenson has authored more than 250 papers, in which he has described several new pathology entities as well as several new tumor subtypes. He has also authored numerous book chapters and five books on liver pathology, including a book on liver biopsy interpretation, a book on tumors of the liver and a comprehensive liver pathology textbook. He is an author of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology Atlas of Tumor Pathology fascicle, and author of the hepatocellular carcinoma chapters for the past two editions of the World Health Organization Blue Books on gastrointestinal and liver tumors. Dr. Torbenson also has a long-standing interest in archaeology and the history of medicine.