Suggested Reading:
https://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(21)03384-9/fulltext
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41575-021-00477-7
Last weekend, over 400 liver disease stakeholders gathered in Scottsdale, Arizona for the 2nd Annual Liver Connect Conference, sponsored by the Chronic Liver Disease Foundation (CLDF). The main meeting ran Friday and Saturday and was preceded on Thursday by a half-day session devoted exclusively to NASH (NASH Connect). Episode 15 and its conversations capture some of the thinking that went into the program design and some highlights of the NASH-related sessions.
This conversation reviewed Thursday’s NASH Connect meeting, which focused on Health Disparities. Panelists discussed their roles in the Thursday presentations and rehashed stories from the other speakers who were on the podcast. The first part of the NASH Connect program focused on epidemiology by region. The second part of the program centered around talks by Mazen Noureddin, who was part of the podcast, and Stephen Harrison, who was not, on implications of these disparities on testing and treatment. As the group reviewed the program, panelists asked questions about regions or issues they wanted to explore more deeply. Toward the end of this conversation, the talk turned to the high-and-increasing rates of NAFLD and NASH in children and adolescents, what they portend for patients’ health as they get older, and the value of educating families in reducing the youth Fatty Liver rate.
This episode and conversations are sponsored by Madrigal Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pursuing novel therapeutics for NASH. Madrigal’s lead candidate, resmetirom, is a once-daily, oral, thyroid hormone receptor (THR)-β selective agonist that is designed to target key underlying causes of NASH in the liver. Resmetirom is currently being evaluated in two Phase 3 clinical studies, MAESTRO-NASH and MAESTRO- NAFLD-1, designed to demonstrate multiple benefits in patients with NASH. For more information, visit www.madrigalpharma.com.
