Incorporating the Patient’s Voice in NASH Clinical Trials

Soren Skovlund, Senior Director, Head, Patient Engagement & Insights, Patient-Centered Research, Evidera Patient Advisory Services Division, PPD, part of Thermo Fisher Scientific

Soren Skovlund is the Senior Director of Patient Engagement and Insights at Evidera. He has 17 years of global experience leading patient-centered research and engagement activities across the value chain within the pharmaceutical industry and has published more than 50 scientific articles within the area. He has designed numerous international research studies focused on patient engagement, has been a part of developing EUPATI and co-authored the global PFMD quality guidance for patient engagement.

Michael Betel, President and Founder of the Fatty Liver Alliance, Fatty Liver Alliance

Michael Betel is the President and Founder of the Fatty Liver Alliance and has been a leader in the area of liver disease, in both commercial and not-for-profit organizations for over 30 years. He has held senior leadership roles including a Business Unit Director in Virology and Oncology at Hoffmann-La Roche, Director of Donor Relations at Canadian Blood Services, and as a Sales and Marketing Leader at Schering-Plough. He was a Director on the board of a Canadian liver-focused charity for nine years.

He is currently acting as the Chair for the Global Liver Institute’s Liver Action Network. Michael is a member of the community advisory board (CAB) for the Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver (CASL). Michael was an AASLD collaborator on the fatty liver disease research and action priorities consensus statement, an EASL participant in NASH consensus statement development and an AASLD participant at the Delphi expert panel developing consensus around the nomenclature of NAFLD.

In 2023, he participated as a stakeholder at Mosaic (A multi-stakeholder multi-specialty NASH Trialists Think Tank) and is a member of the Liver Forum.

Dr. John M. Vierling, Professor of Medicine and Surgery and Chief of Hepatology and Director of Baylor Liver Health at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston

Dr. John M. Vierling MD, FACP, FAASLD, AGAF is a Professor of medicine and surgery and Chief of Hepatology and Director of Baylor Liver Health at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He also serves as Director of Advanced Liver Therapies (a clinical research unit) and formerly served as Program Director of the Hepatology and Liver Transplantation Fellowship.

He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in biology with great distinction and received his MD from Stanford University School of Medicine. He was a Clinical Associate in the liver unit at NIH prior to completing a Gastroenterology Fellowship at UC in San Francisco. He was the founding Medical Director of the Liver Transplantation programs at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and at Cedars-Sinai/UCLA.

His clinical interests include autoimmune and alloimmune liver diseases, liver transplantation, acute liver failure, viral hepatitis, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Wilson disease and drug-induced liver injury (DILI). His translational research interest is immunologic mechanisms of hepatobiliary injury. He has authored over 290 manuscripts and chapters. He is co-editor of Liver Immunology: Principles and Practice, now in its 3rd edition.

Dr. Graham Ellis, Executive Medical Director, Medical Science Strategy, PPD part of Thermo Fisher Scientific

Dr. Graham Ellis, MBChB is a Specialist Physician (endocrinology) based in Cape Town, South Africa. He is currently the Executive Director of Medical Science and Strategies at PPD and is responsible for the diabetes and metabolic disease portfolio. He also serves as a Voting Member of the PPD human safety committee. He joined PPD in 2022 after working as Medical/Snr Director, therapy area strategies for Synexus and Accelerated Enrollment Solutions (AES).

His almost 20 years of experience in clinical research includes being a contributing PI to more than 200 Phase II and III international clinical trials in a wide range of therapy areas including large numbers of studies on T2 diabetes, metabolic disease, diabetic complications and obesity. He was a Founder and Director of HCTC, a large and successful clinical research center until it was acquired by Synexus in 2014.