Cracking Cirrhosis: Complexity of Chronic Liver Disease and Insights for Drug Development

Chronic liver disease is complex. The causes are multifactorial, disease progression is slow and heterogeneous, and the pathophysiology is complicated and still not entirely understood. This has made drug development challenging, and there are still no approved treatments targeting cirrhosis.

Currently, treatment options are limited to addressing the complications of cirrhosis. But there is a lot of ongoing research activity and exciting progress being made in the field of chronic liver disease.

Join our expert speakers as they walk through the complexity of chronic liver disease and the resulting cirrhosis. This webinar will unpack the drivers of liver disease and its progression via inflammation and fibrosis, as well as the implications for drug development and patient selection. It will also cover some of the biomarkers and other tools, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) alone and in combination with other biomarkers, that can help further our disease understanding and provide valuable insights within drug development.

Join this webinar to learn about chronic liver disease biology and pathophysiology, drug development in this space, and to hear our speakers discuss their perspectives of the future for treatment of chronic liver diseases.

Speakers

Quentin Anstee, Dean of Research & Innovation, Professor of Experimental Hepatology, Newcastle University

Prof. Quentin M. Anstee is the Chair of Experimental Hepatology and the Dean of Research & Innovation in the Faculty of Medical Sciences at Newcastle University. A practicing clinician, he is also an Honorary Consultant Hepatologist in the Liver Transplant Unit at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital, where he leads one of the largest Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) clinical services in the UK. He trained in medicine at University College London.

Prof. Anstee’s research has provided key insights into temporal changes in steatohepatitis during disease evolution, identified genetic and epigenetic modifiers of liver disease progression and hepatocellular carcinoma risk and has substantially advanced biomarker development in liver disease. He has coordinated several major international research consortia (including LITMUS) studying pathogenesis and developing/validating biomarkers for MASLD diagnosis, risk stratification and monitoring. He leads the European MASLD Registry and is the Chief Investigator of multiple ongoing clinical trials assessing new therapies for MASLD.

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Lars Johansson, Chief Scientific Officer, Antaros Medical

Lars Johansson has a PhD in Translational Imaging from Uppsala University in Sweden. He has over 180 published peer-reviewed papers and several book chapters on imaging in drug development. Lars has 35 years of experience in clinical imaging in the cardiometabolic and renal disease areas, and about 25 years of experience within the pharma industry.

Prior to his current position, he was a Senior Principal Scientist at AstraZeneca R&D. In his current role as Chief Scientific Officer at Antaros Medical, he is involved in designing clinical studies using imaging endpoints with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET). The prototyping of new imaging methods also includes the development of PET tracers for fibrosis, inflammation and immunology/immuno-oncology.

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