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. He has recently been appointed to the governing board of the European Association for the Study of the Liver.