Manal Abdelmalek, Jörn Schattenberg and Ian Rowe join regulars Stephen Harrison, Louise Campbell and Roger Green to recap NAFLD and NASH-related insights from TLMdX 2021, the AASLD annual liver meeting. This conversation focuses how to make NITs the “gold standard” of drug development instead of biopsy.

The guests is Antaros Medical Chief Scientific Officer and recent SurfingNASH (S2 E50) panelist Lars Johansson, who joins the discussion from the audience to ask about use of spleen volume as a surrogate measure in F2 and F3, the value using AI models to re-evaluate old imaging data and the universality of the emerging NITs. Stephen Harrison praises the concept of going back into old imaging studies while Jörn Schattenberg cautions not to make the task of getting a drug improved even more challenges by bringing other organ systems into the core analysis. After Lars leaves, Manal Abdelmalek identifies genomics as another key item in the TLMdX agenda and Louise Campbell, who mentioned genomics in her “big dent in Fatty Liver” response, identifies three papers from the conference that collectively make compelling points about why and how genomics will shape the future of NASH drug development and, in special situations, patient treatment.

BioPharma, Diagnostics, Drugs, KOL, Patient Advocates, Patients, Policy and Perspectives