Prof. Dr. Sven Francque, EASL Educational Councillor

Prof. Dr. Sven Francque obtained his MD at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in 1994 and was subsequently trained in internal medicine and in gastroenterology and hepatology at the Antwerp University Hospital, Belgium and at the Department of Hepatology of the Beaujon hospital, Clichy, France. He has a long-standing interest and expertise in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and conducted basic research focusing on the vascular changes in steatosis and their contribution to disease progression and leading to his PhD in 2011. His research unit continues to study pathophysiological mechanisms of NASH. He is also conducting clinical research and his unit is partner in several research consortia supported by the European Commission and by the Innovative Medicines Initiative with a focus on NASH pathophysiology, biomarker research and hepatocellular carcinoma. His clinical trial unit participates from the early days of clinical trials in NASH in many clinical trials in the field. Prof. Francque is as scientific committee member involved in the design of several phase 2 and current phase 3 trials in NAFLD and is national and international lead PI of several of these trials. He is author/co-author of over 180 papers in peer-reviewed journals and authored several book chapters on NAFLD. He is editor of JHep Reports, the open-access journal of the European Association for the Study of the Liver. He is senior clinical researcher for the Research Fund of the Flemish government.

He is currently chairman of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology of the University Hospital Antwerp and senior full professor of medicine at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Antwerp. He is scientific coordinator of the Belgian Week of Gastroenterology, the Belgian national research meeting of all scientific societies in gastroenterology and hepatology in Belgium. He coordinated the Belgian guidelines on NAFLD and more recently the EASL and EASO-endorsed NAFLD patient guideline.

Prof. Debbie Shawcross, MD, EASL Vice-Secretary

Professor Debbie Shawcross is a Clinician Scientist and Professor of Hepatology and Chronic Liver Failure based at the Institute of Liver Studies, King’s College London and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. She heads the Gut Microbial Manipulation and Chronic Liver Failure Laboratory (Shawcross Laboratory) in the James Black Centre. Professor Shawcross will serve as the incoming Secretary General at the European Association for the Study of the Liver. She was awarded a 5-year HEFCE Clinical Senior Lectureship in 2008 and has a specific interest in the complications of chronic liver disease and liver failure syndromes. She is a global key opinion leader in hepatic encephalopathy and has a specific research interest in why patients with advanced chronic liver disease are susceptible to developing infection. A dysfunctional gut microbiome plays a key role in patients with cirrhosis by influencing the rate of progression to terminal liver and a major goal for her research programme is to develop interventions which normalise the gut microbiome including faecal microbiota transplantation.

She is the Chief Investigator of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) EME-funded PROMISE Trial investigating faecal microbiota transplantation as a treatment for patients with alcohol and metabolic-related cirrhosis and Principal Investigator of the EU Hosrioon 20:20-funded MICROB-PREDICT Trial.

Additionally, she is the Clinical Co-theme Lead of Microbes in Health and Disease (Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust NIHR Biomedical Research Centre) and Senior Personal Tutor in GKT School of Medicine.