Michael Charlton

Dr. Michael Charlton is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. He serves as Chief of Hepatology, Director of the Center for Liver Diseases and Medical Director of the Transplant Institute at the University of Chicago. He is Past President of the International Liver Transplant Society. Dr. Charlton previously served as Director of Hepatology and Medical Director of Liver Transplantation at the Mayo Clinic. He has served as principal investigator on National Institutes of Health grants studying the pathophysiology of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, developing a widely used small animal model of NASH. He is a lead investigator for national and international clinical trials in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis and viral hepatitis. He has served as a panel member and writer of AASLD Guidelines for the management of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.

Michael Pavlides

I am a consultant hepatologist with an academic interest in the clinical application of non-invasive tests for improving the care of people with liver disease.

Annelie Falkevall

I defended my thesis on the topic of mitochondrial biogenies at the Stockholm University in Sweden. For my postdoctoral studies I joined Ulf Erikssons lab at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. During my postdoctoral studies I started to study the Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor B, VEGFB, at the time a growth factor with unknown biological role. During my postdoctoral training the lab joined the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysic at the Karolinska Institute. I published two papers in Nature describing the role of VEGFB, as a lipid regulator, in health and T2DM. I have continued to explore the role of VEGFB in the most common diabetic complications in T2DM, including NAFLD.
We work in close collaboration with a biopharmaceutic company, CSL Limited, and have developed a VEGF-B neutralizing antibody to be used in humans. The VEGF-B antibody entered a phase 2a trial for patients with DKD, currently under evaluation.

Lars Verschuren

As the lead senior scientist in applied systems biology at TNO, Netherlands, my expertise lies in fusing -omics data with biomedical sciences. Our work, supported by numerous peer-reviewed publications, leverages -omics technologies, Machine Learning and deep biological insights to tackle metabolic diseases like MASLD. We are particularly skilled at performing in silico biomarker prediction, leveraging network biology and data-driven analysis to translate data from preclinical models into valuable clinical insights. These approaches has advanced our understanding of key mechanisms underlying MASLD, and position our work at the forefront of translational science in these critical areas of human disease.

Lopa Mishra

Lopa Mishra is currently a Professor of Medicine and Merinoff Endowed Chair, Co-Director for The Institute for Bioelectronic Medicine at The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Northwell Health, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Current discoveries in Dr. Mishra’s laboratory have led to exciting new findings: Animal models with disruption of TGF-β develop fatty liver and cancers spontaneously on a regular diet reflective of current trends in cancer in the human population and it led to a patent. In addition, Animal models with disruption of TGF-β have an altered microbiome. Mishra discovered that the TGF-β pathway is the effector pathway for the human stem cell syndrome with an 800-fold risk of cancer (Beck-Wiedmann Syndrome). Her research has led to more than 374 peer review articles in Science 2003,2005, PNAS, 2008, JCI, 2013, 2016, Hepatology 2017, Gastroenterology 2018, Cell 2018, Cancer Cell 2018, Cancer Research 2020, Gastroenterology, 2018, 2020, 2021. Dr. Mishra has received many honors including American Gastroenterological Association Award for Top Women in Gastroenterology (2008); In 2016, she was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2017, she was elected to the governing board of the American Association of Liver Diseases. In 2019 she was elected as a member of the Association of American Physicians (AAP) and in 2020 she received the American Association for Cancer Research Team Science Award (AACR).

Rajarshi Banerjee

Rajarshi Banerjee, MD, PhD has served as CEO and a member of Perspectum’s board of directors since co-founding Perspectum in November 2012. Prior to this, Dr. Banerjee was a research fellow at the University of Oxford and developed the magnetic resonance imaging techniques for rapid non-invasive liver assessment and commercialised the method as LiverMultiScan, which has received 510(k) clearance from the FDA and is used in over 250 sites.

Dr. Banerjee continues to work as a consultant physician with the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, with research into the phenotyping of liver disease at an individual and population level in adults and children.

 Dr. Banerjee has many years of experience in running clinical trials and working in multidisciplinary scientific teams to develop applications for cutting-edge imaging technology and is a keen advocate of smart trial design.

Maite G Fernandez de Barrena

Fernandez-Barrena MG´s field of research has been the study of the cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in the progression of Chronic Liver Diseases and in Hepatic and Pancreatic tumor development. Doctoral training in the University of Navarra (Spain). Postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Fernandez-Zapico´s laboratory at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA, focused in the characterization of epigenetic pathways regulating hepatic and pancreatic carcinogénesis and appointed as Assistant Professor of Medicine in Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. Fernandez-Barrena MG returned to the Hepatology Department of CIMA and started a new line of research as Principal Investigator. In 2019 she was selected as Ramon y Cajal Fellow granted by Agent of the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation and in the First Edition of Rising Star by AEEH, 2021. Fernandez-Barrena MG´s group is mainly focused in exploring the epigenetic mechanisms involved in liver diseases and hepatocarcinogenesis and exploiting new avenues for therapeutic intervention.

Ying Shang

Ying Shang’s current work involves studying the risk factors and prognosis of chronic liver disease, with a special interest in identifying non-invasive tests to predict the progression and treatment response in patients at high risk for cirrhosis. She received a medical degree in 2014 and a Ph.D. degree in Epidemiology from Karolinska Institutet in 2021, and her previous work was primarily focused on studying the natural history of type 2 diabetes and its connections to cerebrovascular disease and geriatric syndrome in older adults.

Jude A Oben

Dr Jude A Oben, MD(Oxon),PhD,FRCP,AGAF (Fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association), studied medicine at Oxford University and Stanford University, USA. He holds a Ph.D in Pharmacology from University College London. After Oxford, initial postgraduate training was at Imperial College London (Royal Post-Graduate Medical School). Subsequent post-graduate training was in Ophthalmology at Imperial College, St Mary’s Hospital. He left Ophthalmology for Gastroenterology-Hepatology. During specialist Gastro-Hep training, he undertook post-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins University, USA, with Prof Anna Mae Diehl. His work at Hopkins combined his interest in Neuroscience with Hepatology: specifically Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) and MASLD. He was awarded Wellcome Trust funding on returning to lead a Research Group at UCL, now at King’s College London. His research focuses on Trans-generational transmission of Obesity and MASLD plus Liver Regeneration and Liver Fibrosis with ANS control. His Clinical Expertise is Obesity, MASLD and Metabolic Endoscopy.

Michele Vacca

Prof Michele Vacca, MD, PhD is Associate Professor in Internal Medicine at the “Interdisciplinary Medicine Department” of the University of Bari “Aldo Moro” (Italy), and Medical Consultant at the Internal Medicine Service “Frugoni” of the University Medical Centre of Bari (“Hepatology/MASLD” outpatient clinic). Toward an international cooperation agreement between the University of Bari and the Roger Williams Institute of Hepatology (London, UK), where he is Principal Investigator of the “Hepatic Metabolism and MASLD” Laboratory, he leads an integrated clinical/basic program focussing on hepatic/lipoprotein metabolism, MASLD and MASH-HCC. His laboratory specialises in translational studies, also involving multi-omics, system biology, murine and (multi-organ) in vitro approaches, aimed at characterising molecular pathways involved in MASLD pathophysiology including: 1) obesity and “AT-liver cross-talk” as drivers of liver/lipoprotein metabolic disfunction; 2) metabolic/signalling pathways associated to lipotoxicity and promoting wound-healing responses, MASH progression and MASH-HCC.

Michael P. Cooreman

Dr. Michael P. Cooreman is a gastroenterologist-hepatologist and Chief Medical Officer at Inventiva; before joining Inventiva in 2020 he was Vice President and Global Therapeutic Area Head Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Ferring. He has held R&D leadership roles at Novartis, Merck, Mitsubishi-Tanabe and biotechnology companies, in R&D related to liver and gastrointestinal diseases, immunology, fibrosis, viral diseases and oncology. Before joining R&D in the biopharmaceutical industry, he worked as a staff hepatologist at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam.

Diana Julie Leeming

Diana J Leeming has more than 20 years of experience within extracellular matrix (ECM) research and the development of non-invasive tests for such in fibrotic diseases. Diana J Leeming has extensive knowledge on the use of markers of the ECM for drug development and has more than 200 publications within this scientific area. Her speciality are markers to be used in for drug development and clinical evaluations in patients with chronic liver disease including SLD, PSC as well as patient with pulmonary fibrosis.

Juan Basterra

After more than 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry Dr. Juan Basterra co-founded and is CEO of Mikrobiomik which will be the first Company worldwide to market in Europe the first biological drug based on the intestinal microbiota for the treatment of intestinal infection by Clostridioides difficile through a single dose of 3 capsules with FSPIM (Full Spectrum & Purified Intestinal Microbiota) technology. The liver is of particular interest to Mikrobiomik and in addition to the EMOTION trial, Mikrobiomik will launch a phase III clinical trial for the treatment of decompensated liver cirrhosis in 8 Spanish hospitals led by the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona.