Binita M. Kamath, MBBChir MRCP MTR
Staff Physician, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, The Hospital for Sick Children
Associate Scientist, Research Institute
Associate Professor, University of Toronto
Dr. Binita Kamath was educated at Cambridge University in England and trained at several London hospitals, including Kings College Hospital. She moved to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 2000 and completed her fellowship in GI, Hepatology and Nutrition. She joined the faculty in 2006 and developed a strong interest in cholestatic liver disease, specifically Alagille syndrome. She joined the faculty at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in 2009 as a Hepatologist and Clinician-Investigator continuing to work on biliary diseases and utilizing stem cell biology to develop disease models
M. ERIC GERSHWIN, M.D
Editor in Chief, The Journal of Autoimmunity
Distinguished Professor of Medicine
Chief Division of Rheumatology Allergy and Clinical Immunology
The University of California School of Medicine
M. Eric Gershwin, M.D. is currently Distinguished Professor of Medicine as well as the Jack and Donald Chia Professor of Medicine. He is also Chief of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at the University of California School of Medicine in Davis. Dr. Gershwin has published more than 20 books, 900 experimental papers, and over 200 book chapters or review articles. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Autoimmunity and also Clinical Reviews in Allergy and Immunology and on the editorial board of multiple other journals. His major contributions revolve around the theme of autoimmune disease. Dr. Gershwin was the first individual to clone an autoantigen and identified the mitochondrial autoantigens of PBC. Subsequently, his lab has focused entirely on PBC and his diagnostic reagents have become the standard throughout the world. More importantly, however, he has dissected the CD4, CD8 and B cell response in PBC and demonstrated that the autoepitope is nearly identical in each case. Further, his research has helped to explain why only small bile duct cells are involved and this thesis has led to our understanding of the pathophysiology of biliary damage as an orchestrated response that begins with adaptive immunity and ends with innate immunity. This work has been published in the Journal of Immunology, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, and the Journal of Experimental Medicine. He is also listed in the top 1% of all cited authors in Pubmed in immunology and has published more original work on primary biliary cirrhosis than any other individual in the world. Finally, I should note that he has sat and chaired on committees for NIH, NSF, USDA, FTC and the FDA.
Prof. Gideon Hierschfield
Professor of Autoimmune Liver Disease at the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Consultant Transplant
Hepatologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, University Hospitals Birmingham, UK
Gideon Hirschfield graduated from Trinity College Oxford in 1994 (having been awarded the University of Oxford Wronker Prize for most outstanding performance in the Final Honour School), and subsequently from Cambridge where he completed his clinical studies with distinction. He undertook junior medical posts at the Hammersmith and Royal Brompton hospitals before moving to a MRC Clinical Research Fellowship at UCL. There he worked within the uniquely translational National Amyloidosis Centre/Centre for Acute Phase Proteins, with Sir Mark Pepys FRS as his supervisor. His PhD was focussed on the development of inhibitors of C-reactive protein. He completed his advanced Gastroenterology and Hepatology training in Cambridge, and was awarded Specialist status in 2007. Until January 2012 he worked in Toronto, Canada, where he was a Staff Physician and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University Health Network and University of Toronto. During this time he managed one of the largest autoimmune liver disease cohorts in North America, and with his colleague Prof Kathy Siminovitch published the seminal genetic observations underpinning the IL-12 signalling axis as critical to the pathophysiology of PBC. He now divides his time between translational research in autoimmune liver disease, and his clinical, Transplant/Hepatology, practice at the QE hospital. In particular the cohorts of patients with PBC, PSC and AIH he manages are some of the largest internationally, providing Gideon unique clinical skills in their management and recruitment to clinical trials of novel therapies
Prof. Dr. med. Christoph Schramm
I. Department of Medicine and Martin-Zeitz-Centre for Rare Diseases
University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf
Christoph Schramm is senior consultant gastroenterologist and hepatologist at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf. He is director of the Martin-Zeitz-Centre for Rare Diseases and heads the YAEL-Centre for Autoimmune Liver Diseases. In clinical and basic research he investigates hepatic immune regulation and the pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune liver diseases, with a focus on primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) and autoimmune hepatitis (AIH)
Michael Trauner, MD
Professor of Medicine, Chair, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
Department of Internal Medicine III, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Michael Trauner, MD, received his medical education at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, Austria, and at Yale University’s Liver Center in New Haven, USA. From 2005 till 2010 he served as Professor of Experimental and Clinical Hepatology at the Medical University of Graz. Since 2010 he is Professor of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Chair of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the Medical University of Vienna. Dr. Trauner’s main
research interests are the molecular mechanisms of bile acid signaling by nuclear receptors, mechanisms of cell injury, and development of novel pharmacologic treatments for cholestatic and fatty liver diseases. He has published more than 420 peer-reviewed scientific papers listed in Pubmed (H-index 66), 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.
Dr. Trauner is past president of the Austrian Society of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, member of the Academia
Europaea, a fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGAF) and American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (FAASLD), as well as a member of several other national and international professional and scientific societies. He has served on editorial boards and scientific committees, such as the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Governing Board and the United European Gastroenterology Council. He has also served as associate editor of Journal of Hepatology and Hepatology.