Naim Alkhouri, MD, FAASLD, is the chief medical officer, chief of Transplant Hepatology, and director of the Steatotic Liver Program at Arizona Liver Health (ALH) in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Alkhouri is also the medical director of research at the Clinical Research Institute of Ohio and the director of the Steatotic Liver Program at Northshore Gastroenterology and Endoscopy in Westlake, Ohio.

Prior to joining ALH, Dr. Alkhouri served as the director of the Metabolic Health Center at the Texas Liver Institute and as associate professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas.

Dr. Alkhouri completed his gastroenterology and transplant hepatology training at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, where he also was appointed assistant professor of medicine and director of the Metabolic Liver Disease Clinic at the Cleveland Clinic Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute.

Dr. Alkhouri is a key opinion leader in the field of MASH therapeutics and an advisor/consultant to many pharmaceutical and biomarker development companies. He is principal investigator on several multicenter global MASH trials and a member of the AASLD MASLD Special Interest Group.

Dr. Alkhouri has been published in over 250 publications, including the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA, Nature Medicine, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and the Journal of Hepatology. He presents his work at both national and international medical conferences.

Course Director

Meena B. Bansal, MD, FAASLD, joined the faculty at Mount Sinai in 2001 after completing her gastroenterology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2002, she became director of the Transplant Hepatology Fellowship, overseeing one of the largest transplant fellowship programs of its kind in the United States. Both clinically and scientifically, she has mentored well over 80 trainees, shaping the careers of the next generation of academic hepatologists.

From 2013 to 2021, in addition to maintaining a National Institutes of Health-funded research program focused on the molecular mechanism of liver fibrosis with seminal contributions to our understanding of liver fibrosis in people living with HIV, Dr. Bansal held many different leadership roles at Mount Sinai, including director of Translational Research, medical director of Hospital-Based Clinics, chief medical officer of Mount Sinai Care, LLC, deputy chief medical officer for Mount Sinai Health Partners, and vice president of Population Health for Quality and Efficiency. In these roles, she helped generate increased quality dollars in value-based contracts, created Mount Sinai’s first ambulatory pharmacy program, addressed broad population health needs, and gained knowledge about payer relations in an ever-changing healthcare landscape. She has also served as the principal investigator for numerous clinical trials for MASH/nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).

At the international/national levels, she has chaired numerous committees and held the position of secretary for the American Association for the Study of Liver and currently serves as the director of the newly formed MASLD/MASH (Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease/NASH) Center of Excellence at Mount Sinai.

Most recently, in January 2024, Dr. Bansal was named System Chief, Division of Liver Diseases for the Mount Sinai Health System.

Prof Quentin M. Anstee is the Chair of Experimental Hepatology and the Dean of Research & Innovation in the Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, UK. 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 Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) clinical services in the U.K. He trained in medicine at University College London where he was awarded a First Class Honours degree and won First Prize in Medicine in the final MB BS examination.

Prof Anstee’s translational research has made major contributions across the pathophysiology, natural history, diagnosis and treatment of NAFLD. His work 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 the field of biomarker development in liver disease. He coordinates two major international research consortia that are studying NAFLD pathogenesis and developing/validating accurate biomarkers to assist the diagnosis, risk-stratification and monitoring of patients with NAFLD: ‘EPoS’ Elucidating Pathways of Steatohepatitis (EU H2020 funded €6 million, 2015-2019) and ‘LITMUS’ Liver Investigation: Testing Marker Utility in Steatohepatitis (EU IMI2 funded €47.3 million, 2017-2024). He leads the European NAFLD Registry and is the chief investigator of multiple ongoing clinical trials assessing new medical therapies for NAFLD. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Hepatology.

Dr. Bugianesi MD, PhD, is Full Professor of Gastroenterology and Scientific Director of the Dept of Medical Sciences at the University of Turin in Italy. Dr. Bugianesi is an international acknowledged expert on Metabolic dysfunction Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD) with over 20-years of experience. She contributed in the field with work describing the metabolic mechanisms of insulin resistance related to the onset and progression of liver damage, the natural history of the disease (including the first demonstration of HCC as a complication of NASH), the development of non-invasive markers of fibrosis, and the involvement in several trials for the treatment of NAFLD/NASH. Her contribution to science is testified by over 300 publications, an H Index = 82 (Scopus), N. Citations = 43,830.

Laurent Castera, MD, PhD, FAASLD

Department of Hepatology, Hôpital Beaujon, Clichy, France) and Visiting Professor of Medicine in University College of London (Institute of Liver and Digestive Health, Royal Free Hospital London, UK). He received his medical degree from the University of Paris-VI and his PhD from the University of Paris-XII. His research interests focus on non-invasive methods for liver fibrosis assessment and MASLD/NAFLD. He has published more than 250 papers in international peer reviewed journals and serves as Associate Editor for Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology as well as on the editorial boards of the Journal of Hepatology, Gut and Liver International. He has been the chairman of the first international guidelines on the use of non-invasive tests (EASL-ALEH Clinical Practice Guidelines J Hepatol 2015). He has served on the Scientific Committee of the United European Gastroenterology (UEG) from 2011 to 2013 and on the UEG Council from 2017 to 2021. He has served on the Governing Board of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) from 2012 to 2013, as EASL Vice Secretary from 2013 to 2015 and as EASL Secretary General from 2015 to 2017.

Mazen Noureddin, MD, MHSc, did his internal medicine residency at the University of Southern California (USC) and then moved to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he enrolled in a 3-year hepatology fellowship at the Liver Diseases Branch of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. There, he finished the NIH/Duke University Master of Health Sciences in Clinical Research program. After completing his NIH fellowship, he completed a gastroenterology fellowship at the University of California, San Diego, where he was a T32 NIH fellow. He joined USC as an assistant professor of clinical medicine in 2013. Dr. Noureddin was then recruited to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2015 and was appointed as the founding director of the Fatty Liver Program.

Dr. Noureddin is internationally known for his research in the area of NAFLD/NASH and NASH-related cirrhosis. He conducted more than 50 investigational clinical studies of novel treatments for NASH. He is an expert in noninvasive testing and biomarkers of NASH and cirrhosis. He has published in all these areas and has been invited to consensus panels on these topics by multiple international societies, including the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), the European Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver, and the Latin American Association for the Study of the Liver. He has given invited lectures on NAFLD/NASH at national and international society meetings and serves on several steering committees/advisory boards for industry. He is the vice chair of the AASLD NASH special interest group and has served on the editorial board for major gastrointestinal (GI) journals, including Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He is an associate editor for Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Dr. Noureddin has been funded by the National Cancer Institute and has served as a reviewer on NIH study sections. He has published over 230 papers in many journals including The Lancet, Nature Medicine, Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Science Translational Medicine, the Journal of Hepatology, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

In May 2022, Dr. Noureddin moved to Houston. He is currently a professor of medicine at the Lynda K. and David M. Underwood Center for Digestive Disorders at the J.C. Walter Jr. Transplant Center, Sherrie and Alan Conover Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at Houston Methodist Hospital (currently ranked #5 in GI and GI surgery by US News). He also has established the Houston Research Institute, which is a state-of-the-art facility that offers patients with liver disease access to new innovative noninvasive diagnostic testing and breakthrough therapies.

Juan M Pericàs, MD, MPH, PhD, is a clinician scientist with training in liver disease, infectious disease, and public health. He is currently staff at the Liver Unit and senior investigator at the Advanced Chronic Liver Disease Laboratory at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital-VHIR and associate professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.

He is member of the Clinical Trial Working Group of the European University Hospital Alliance and sits on the steering committee of the Spanish Network of Biomedical Research Centers in Liver and Digestive Diseases (CIBEREHD), as well as in the scientific committees of the Spanish Association for the Study of the Liver (AEEH) and the Multicenter Prospective Cohorts of MASLD at the Spanish level (HEPAmet) and MASLD cirrhosis in Catalonia.

Dr. Pericàs has authored over 240 scientific articles and 20 book chapters, led more than 20 research projects at the national and international levels, and participated in over 25 clinical trials. His main interests include the natural history of the advanced liver disease in MASLD, the overlapping impacts of alcohol and infections over the pathophysiology of steatotic liver disease, and the role of social determinants of health on the distribution and outcomes of liver diseases.

Michael Roden, MD, is professor and chairman of Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolic Disorders at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, director of the Division of Endocrinology and Diabetology at the University Hospital of Düsseldorf, and spokesman for the Executive Board and scientific director of the German Diabetes Center, the Leibniz Center for Diabetes Research at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in Germany.

Dr. Roden’s research focuses on energy metabolism in humans under physiological conditions and with metabolic disorders such as metabolic syndrome, diabetes mellitus, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. He has made major contributions to our understanding of the cellular mechanisms of fatty acid– and amino acid–induced insulin resistance in humans. Additionally, he examined the function of mitochondria in muscle and liver tissue. With his research group, Dr. Roden is contributing to the development of novel noninvasive methods for real-time analysis of tissue-specific metabolism. His studies demonstrated that alterations of mitochondrial function can decisively influence the development and progression of diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. His recent research contributes to a novel differentiation of diabetes subtypes with various risks for their sequelae and promotes the way to precision medicine for people with diabetes.

Dr. Roden is the author of more than 700 peer-reviewed publications.

Michael Trauner, MD, received his medical education at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, Austria, where he started his residency and fellowship in internal medicine in 1991. From 1994 to 1997 he was trained as an Erwin Schrodinger postdoctoral research fellow of the Austrian Science Foundation at Yale University’s Department of Internal Medicine and Liver Center in New Haven, USA, where he worked on the molecular alterations of hepatobiliary transport systems in cholestasis in the lab of James L. Boyer. After returning to Graz, he completed his training in internal medicine and a fellowship in gastroenterology and hepatology. He then established an internationally recognized research group in cholestatic and fatty liver diseases, and founded the Liver Center at the Medical University of Graz, serving as professor of experimental and clinical hepatology. Since 2010 he has been professor of gastroenterology and hepatology and chair of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Medical University of Vienna, where he is also division head of one of the largest clinical gastroenterology, endoscopy, and liver services in Europe.

Dr. Trauner’s main research interests are the molecular mechanisms of bile acid transport and signaling in cholestatic and steatotic liver diseases, the mechanisms of cell injury in cholestatic and steatotic liver disease, and the development of novel pharmacologic treatments for cholestatic and steatotic liver diseases. He has published more than 770 peer-reviewed scientific papers listed in Pubmed (H-index 104), 45 book chapters and has edited 3 books. He has delivered more than 250 invited lectures at international scientific meetings, mainly on molecular and clinical aspects of cholestatic and metabolic liver diseases, and holds three patents on the treatment of cholestatic and metabolic liver diseases.