International
Digestive
Disease
Forum 2021

Gerhard Rogler, MD, is Professor of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Head of the Department of Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Zürich University Hospital, Switzerland.

The main research interest of Professor Rogler is translational research to better understand the unmet needs in the IBD field, especially in terms of intestinal stricture and fistula formation. His research group has developed new models for intestinal fibrosis and achieved a novel understanding of fistula pathophysiology.

He is PI of the Swiss IBD Cohort Study, former member of the ECCO governing board, member of the IOIBD and the German Academy of Science (Leopoldina). Professor Rogler has authored over 600 peer-reviewed articles.

Florence Wong, MD is a Full Professor at the University of Toronto and staff Hepatologist at the Toronto General Hospital, Ontario, Canada. She received her medical degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia and completed her postgraduate training in Australia and in Toronto, Canada.

Apart from caring for a large population of patients with advanced liver cirrhosis, Dr. Wong has been active in research in the pathogenesis of portal hypertension, ascites formation, liver-kidney interaction, including the development of hepatorenal syndrome, and renal failure in cirrhosis for the past 28 years. She has received research funding from various funding agencies including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canadian Liver Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

She has been the Secretary of the International Ascites Club, organizing two international meetings on the complications of ascites, She also held the position as the Chair of the Education Committee of the Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver. Recently, she served as the Chair of the “Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure Special Interest Group” of the American Association for the Study of the Liver, and organizer of the Single Topic Symposium of Acute-on-Chronic Liver Failure. Currently, she is the Deputy Editor of Liver Transplantation. In addition, she is a regular grant reviewer for various international funding agencies including the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Institutions of Health of the USA, the Wellcome Trust of the United Kingdom, Swiss National Science Foundation, The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development and German Research Foundation. She is also the recipient of the Gold Medal from the Canadian Liver Foundation and the Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver for her contribution to academia in Hepatology.

She has published widely on the topics related to ascites, and renal dysfunction in cirrhosis. She has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications as well as contributing regular reviews, book chapters and editorials on similar topics. She is a member of the writing committees to write the guidelines for the management of refractory ascites and for the management of acute on chronic liver failure for the American Association for the Study of the Liver. She is also a member of the writing committee for the treatment guidelines for acute on chronic liver failure for the American College of Gastroenterology. She has acted as consultant for the pharmaceutical and device industries for clinical studies on ascites and renal dysfunction in cirrhosis, especially on the use of terlipressin for hepatorenal syndrome and the use of an automated low-flow ascites (ALFA) pump for ascites. Most recently, she has been responsible for putting together a landmark international document defining renal failure in cirrhosis.

Mathias Heikenwälder is a trained molecular biologist, with expertise in immunology and a strong link to translational research evoked by 10 years of work and expertise in a Pathology Institution (Clinical Pathology, University Hospital Zurich). Since October 2015 he is Department Head at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg focusing on the link between chronic inflammation and cancer.

The laboratory aims at understanding the different immune signatures of chronic inflammatory human diseases using relevant mouse models - with the final aim to generate models of chronic inflammation potentially used for pre-clinical research. Thus, it focuses on comparative studies of human and animal model tissues, recapitulating human disease on a histo-pathological and pathophysiological level. The laboratory engage in classical molecular biology techniques complemented with sophisticated ways to receive as much information from tissue samples through histology (e.g. light microscopy / immune fluorescence / FISH / in situ hybridization), other in vivo imaging techniques (e.g. MRI) as well as through FACS analyses for tissue homogenates. Still at the same time the laboratory is also interested in the systemic functional effects of pathologies and the interplay between several affected non-lymphoid tissues and the immune system.

Finally, testing several therapeutic compounds in a single use but also combinatorial fashion is one of its goals employing established and stratified pre-clinical mouse models.

Rohit Loomba is a Professor of Medicine (with tenure), Director of Hepatology, at University of California at San Diego. He is an internationally recognized thought leader in the management of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and has established a thriving and vibrant center for clinical and research in NAFLD at UCSD.

Professor Loomba is the Founding Director of the UCSD NAFLD Research Center. Along with his collaborators, he has led several innovative applications such as establishment of MRI-PDFF as a non-invasive biomarker of treatment response in early phase trials in NASH, which has now been adopted in more than 50 clinical trials conducted worldwide. He holds two patents on non-invasive biomarkers of NAFLD and fibrosis.

His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health including R01, U01, P30 and P01 grant mechanisms, Foundation of NIH, National Science Foundation as well as several investigator initiated research projects funded by the industry. He is the Principal Investigator, UCSD, for the NIDDK-sponsored NASH Clinical Research Network. He served as the elected Chair of the NAFLD, Special Interest Group of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. And is the elected member to the National Board of Directors of the American Liver Foundation.

He serves on the Editorial Board of Gastroenterology, Journal of Hepatology, GUT and Nature Reviews in Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He served as the Deputy Editor of HEPATOLOGY, the official journal of the AASLD, from 2017-2021.

Professor Loomba has published more than 300 manuscripts and has an H-index of 87. He is among the top 1% of the globally highly cited scientists across all fields in 2019 and 2020 by Web of Science. He is an elected member of American Society of Clinical Investigation.

UCSD Gastroenterology and Hepatology were listed as the number 1 research and education program in the World by the US World News ranking in 2020.

Siew Ng is Director of Microbiota I-Center (MagIC) at Hong Kong Science and Technology Park, Professor of Medicine, Assistant Dean (Development) and Associate Director of Centre for Gut Microbiota Research at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She received her Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree from the University of London and the Doctor of Philosophy degree (PhD) from Imperial College London. She is Fellow of the American Gastroenterology Association, Royal College of Physicians of London, Edinburg and Hong Kong. Her research focuses on microbiome-related health and diseases including inflammation, infections, cancer, and childhood diseases such as eczema and autism. Her work aims to transform microbiome diagnostics and therapeutics for early disease and cancer detection and health restoration. In 2017, she established Asia’s First Microbiota Transplantation and Research Centre and her group recently discovered a novel oral microbiome immunity formula that helps rebalance gut microbiota and boost immunity during the COVID-19 pandemic. This invention has been tested in clinical study and is available to the wider community. She and her team has also developed a non-invasive stool test for prediction of recurrent adenoma. Prof Ng was awarded First-class award in Natural Sciences and Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Awards (Science and Technology) in 2020 from the Ministry of Education, China.

Massimo Pinzani is Professor of Medicine at University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom. He is a Clinical and Translational Hepatologist, Sheila Sherlock Chair of Hepatology and Director of the UCL Institute for Liver and Digestive Health, Division of Medicine. He is one of the pioneers in the research dedicated to cellular and molecular mechanisms of liver fibrosis and relative diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Current research is centred on regenerative medicine and in particular on the development of extracellular matrix scaffold of liver, pancreas and small intestine for cell bioengineering and 3D disease modelling. Professor Pinzani research activity is summarised in more than 250 original peer-reviewed publications (H Index of 91, Scopus). He has served in the governing and scientific boards of major international organization in the area of Hepatology and Gastroenterology, and as Editor in Chief and Associate Editor of top peer reviewed international journals in the area of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He served as Educational Councilor and member of the governing board of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) (2015-2019). He is currently Chairman of the EASL Consortium for Regenerative Hepatology and co-founder of Engitix Ltd, an UCL spin-off company dedicated to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine with particular focus on the liver and digestive tract.

Weiping Zou, Charles B. de Nancrede Professor, serves as Director of the Michigan Center of Excellence for Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy. At the national level, he was the AACR Cancer Immunology (CIMM) Chairperson 2019-2020 and has served as the AAI Cancer Immunology Abstract Programming Chair for 4 years. He is an elected member of AAAS and AAP. He has delivered more than 300 invited lectures at different institutions and conferences and published more than 200 articles and book chapters, including 36 articles in Nature, Science, and Cell journal series. His laboratory is one of the most cited research teams in the field of immunology. Their work has been highlighted by many scientific news agencies. “Specific recruitment of regulatory T cells in ovarian carcinoma fosters immune privilege and predicts reduced survival”, an original work on human Tregs, has been cited more than 5,000 times since its publication. Dr. Zou has made seminal contributions to our understanding of immunosuppressive mechanisms in the tumor microenvironment. His early concept of combinatorial immunotherapeutic strategies has laid the foundation for current cancer immunotherapy and has provided rationales for novel combinations.