Biliary Disease : From Science to Clinic

David H. Adams, MD, FRCP, FMedSci is the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Head of College of Medical and Dental Sciences and Dean of Medicine at the University of Birmingham, UK, as well as Professor of Hepatology and Honorary Consultant Hepatologist. He is an international leader in inflammatory liver disease and immune mechanisms of liver injury and has been at the forefront of developments in liver immunology over the last 20 years.  He has published more than 250 papers and has attracted significant grant income nationally and internationally. His clinical interests are transplant hepatology and autoimmune liver disease.  He has played major leadership roles nationally and internationally.  He has a particular interest in clinical academic careers and chairs the AMS Mentoring working group and has been a member of fellowship panels at MRC, Wellcome Trust and Core and INSERM (France). Laboratory research interests are focused on mechanisms of immune-mediated liverdisease. He was made a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2000 and an NIHR senior investigator in 2013.  He has a long-standing interest in understanding how leukocyte-endothelial interactions regulate the development and persistence of chronic inflammation and fibrosis in liver disease and how specific micro-environmental signals determine the positioning, activation and survival of effector cells within the liver. Based on this knowledge his laboratory demonstrated the role of specific adhesion molecules and chemokines in liver disease and helped to define the function of novel molecules including vascular adhesion protein-1.  His laboratory are now using their knowledge of the molecular mechanisms that regulate leukocyte trafficking to the liver to develop immune and cellular therapies for liver disease through the facilities provided by the Birmingham NIHR Liver BRU.

Gideon M. Hirschfield, MA, MB, BChir, FRCP, PhD is a Professor and Honorary Consultant Transplant Hepatologist at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is committed to discovery and translational science in immune-mediated liver disease and his research goals focus on identification and implementation of effective, personalised therapies for patients with immune-mediated liver diseases. Dr. Hirschfield graduated from Cambridge, and trained academically/clinically at UCL/Cambridge, before moving to Toronto.  He was recruited in 2012 to develop the Birmingham autoimmune liver programme, since when he has exploited the unique clinical and scientific environment, establishing himself as a world leader and key opinion former. He has published over 145 papers and his work, with colleagues and collaborators include: a) discovery of novel genetic risk factors for PBC; b) application of immune based screening technology to understand immune mediated liver disease; c) development of internationally applied stratifiers of clinical outcome in autoimmune liver disease; d) design, conduct and reporting of early phase clinical trials in immune-mediated liver disease spanning Industry and Academic lead studies; e) leadership in NIHR/MRC funded national disease platforms (UK-PBC, UK-PSC, UK-Autoimmune; Training lead NIHR-Rare Disease TRC) and patient (PBC Foundation, PSC Support, AIH support) engagement.

Evaggelia Liaskou, BSc, PhD is a senior post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Liver Research and NIHR Biomedical Research Unit, Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her area of interest is in understanding the nature and function of lymphocytic infiltration in autoimmune liver disease, and she is the first author on a number of seminal papers in the field. Dr. Liaskou earned a BSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Thrace, Greece, and a PhD degree in liver immunology at the University of Birmingham. As a Marie Curie Early Stage Career PhD fellow she also worked at the University of Turku in Finland for six months. Since 2012 she has been working with Dr Hirschfield with research interests on the immunobiology of autoimmune liver diseases. As a post-doctoral research fellow she has been awarded a Sheila Sherlock Short-Term Training Fellowship, which allowed her to spend three months at the Norwegian PSC Centre in Oslo, Norway. PSC Partners Seeking a Cure and Wellcome Trust ISSF are some of the other funders that have supported her research, in addition to salary support from NIHR and MRC (UK-PBC).