Surfing the MASH Tsunami

Send us Fan Mail This week's Vault looks back to the EASL Congress 2023 and includes Aleksander Krag, Sven Francque and all three surfers: Jörn Schattenberg, Louise Campbell and Roger Green. The focus of this conversation revolves around program design. The original conversation came with a robust description: This conversation starts with Roger’s question to Sven around his role as Education...

Send us Fan Mail This final conversation from SurfingMASH's EASL Congress 2024 preview includes two final papers, one covering MASLD drug development, and a diverse set of answers to Roger Green's closing question. Jörn Schattenberg discusses a paper he will present on a completely new concept to treat MASLD, a Phase 2a trial of a transglutaminase inhibitor, a compound originally develop...

Send us Fan Mail This conversation revolves largely around two Big Data presentations Hannes Hagstrom's team is sharing at the EASL Congress. Every other panelist has at least one meaningful comment to make about the future of Big Data in MASLD. Hannes describes two big data studies of his own, "very much Big Data, but it's not omics." One examined 860,000 residents of Stockhol...

Send us Fan Mail This conversation starts with Jörn Schattenberg joining the conversation. The main points are two abstracts, one reviewed by Jörn and the other by Aleksander Krag. As Hannes finishes discussing his abstract, Jörn joins the podcast. While Michelle looks for an abstract she highlighted on which Jörn is an author, Jörn discusses a panel that Hannes will chair on the future of hepatol...

Send us Fan Mail This conversation starts and ends with thoughts from Michelle Long. Her first comment praises the expanded networking opportunities in the program, and her last comment focuses on the quality of the MASLD abstracts (really, all abstracts) and the importance of reviewing them in advance.  Michelle starts by commenting on the networking sessions that EASL is sponsoring around the la...

Send us Fan Mail This first conversation from our EASL Congress 2024 preview starts with EASL Secretary General Aleksander Krag offering his vision for next week's meeting in Milano, after which Hannes Hagstrom shares some of his thoughts about the meeting design.  Aleksander starts by discussing the preparation that has gone into this Congress since the Vienna meeting closed last August. The...

Send us Fan Mail Next week, 7,000+ hepatology stakeholders will convene in Milano, Italy, to consume 2,000+ posters and presentations, including an extensive set of MASLD studies, at EASL Congress 2024. EASL Secretary General Aleksander Krag, Hannes Hagstrom, and Michelle Long join Jörn Schattenberg and Roger Green to preview the program. 00:00:00 - Surf's Up: Season 5 Episode 17 Standard lea...

Send us Fan Mail In this excerpt from last July, Stephen Harrison shares results of the FASCINATE-2 study as part of SurfingMASH's larger coverage of exciting drug trials presented at The EASL Congress.  The original writeup reads: This month, Surfing NASH embarks on a series of episodes dedicated to takeaways emerging from June's two major conferences: the 2023 EASL Congress in Vienna a...

Send us Fan Mail This is the second half of Roger Green's conversation with Dimitar Tonev. It focuses largely on some of the elements of Stephen's personality that made him so unique and a role model within the community.  Dimitar discusses one more innovation Stephen brought to MASLD clinical trials: recruiting in neighborhoods that received lower levels of medical care and then, within...

Send us Fan Mail The conversation shares the first half of Roger Green's interview with Dimitar Tonev, whose tribute comment to Stephen Roger shared in a recent SurfingMASH weekly newsletter.  Because this is Dimitar's first appearance on SurfingMASH, he starts by telling the audience a bit about his history, including the fact that he came to know Stephen from the viral hepatitis days....

Send us Fan Mail This conversation includes the second half of Jörn Schattenberg's and Roger Green's interview with Donna Cryer. It focuses largely on Stephen's inclusive approaches towards bringing stakeholders to pivotal discussions.  Donna starts this conversation by noting an important thing she learned early in her career: when patients, advocates and physicians work together,...

Send us Fan Mail This conversation includes the first half of Jörn Schattenberg's and Roger Green's interview with Donna Cryer. While the question is about Stephen's most outstanding contribution to MASLD, the focus is more on his remarkable ability to trigger increased awareness of MASH in many different ways. Roger starts the conversation by asking Jörn and Donna to describe one o...

Send us Fan Mail Global Liver Institute Founder and CEO Donna Cryer and hepatology researcher and industry executive Dimitar Tonev join Jörn Schattenberg and Roger Green to share memories of our co-founder and  MASLD leader Stephen Harrison.   00:00:00 - Surf's Up: Season 5 Episode 16 Standard lead-in, including quotes from panelists 00:02:55 - Introduction Roger describes the structure of th...

Send us Fan Mail This week's vault looks back to SurfingMASH's Barcelona coverage in earlier years to identify one point we can use to evaulate progress in the field. In this case, we looked back one year to see that INCBCN focus on NITs was driven largely by work from NAIL-NIT. Specifically, the 2023 version of NIT coverage at #SLDThinkTank 2024 was a discussion of real-world data from...

Send us Fan Mail This wrap-up conversation focuses on elements to add and reconsider for #SLDThinkTank 2025. One key concept was to broaden the set of stakeholders invited to participate. Another involved focusing on the broader idea of "preventive hepatology."  This conversation starts with Roger Green asking the group what other topics from #SLDThinkTank 2024 the panel should discuss b...

Send us Fan Mail This conversation from #SLDThinkTank 2024 focuses largely on ways to improve delivery of screening services to patients. Along the way, participants reflect on the value of having Rezdiffra approved in the US and on its way to approval in other markets.  As the conversation starts, Mike Betel transitions from a broader discussion of prevention to note that there are 94 FibroScan d...

Send us Fan Mail As the Surfers dive deeper into the substance of #SLDThinkTank 2024, Jeff Lazarus describes the meeting agenda and anticipated outputs, and other panelists discuss how the "Magic Wand" exercise and other ideation elements produced some truly "Big Picture" insights. The conversation starts with Roger asking participants to describe the meeting agenda and what th...

Send us Fan Mail The first conversation from our #SLDThinkTank 2024 coverage explores the meeting design from two perspectives. Co-hosts Jeff Lazarus and Jörn Schattenberg discuss the overall design, after which participants Maja Thiele and Mike Betel share their reactions.   The conversation starts with Jeff providing background and rationale for the #SLDThinkTank 2024 design. He starts by referr...

Send us Fan Mail #SLDThinkTank participant Maja Thiele, a first-time guest, shares her professional history and the traditional "one thing the audience might not know about you if you did not tell them." In the process, she talks about her professional history and a current study, LiverAIM, for which she is leading a pivotal element.  Two elements make this introduction unique. First, Ma...

Send us Fan Mail #SLDThinkTank 2024 co-chair Jörn Schattenberg and SLD Think Tank co-chair Jeff Lazarus, participants Maja Thiele and Mike Betel and SurfingMASH co-hosts Louise Campbell and Roger Green convene to discuss #SLDThinkTank, a conference designed to innovate solutions for addressing large issues, many involving public health,  in conquering MASLD.  00:00:00 - Surf's Up: Season 5 Ep...

Send us Fan Mail SurfingMASH's last year-end interview with Stephen Harrison took place in 2022. Louise Campbell and Roger Green join Stephen to discuss a promising year in MASH drug development and the podcast itself.  At the time, this was the description of the interview posted in Buzzsprout: In the Season 3 NAFLD Year-in-Review conversations series, Surfers Jörn Schattenberg, Louise Campb...

Send us Fan Mail Manal Abdelmalek and Naim Alkhouri join co-hosts Jörn Schattenberg, Louise Campbell and Roger Green to reflect on the greatest professional accomplishments of co-founder and former co-host Dr. Stephen Harrison. Naim Alkhouri starts this conversation by describing the two prospective epidemiology papers Stephen co-authored at San Antonio Military Medical Center in 2011 and 2021, an...

Send us Fan Mail Manal Abdelmalek and Naim Alkhouri join co-hosts Jörn Schattenberg, Louise Campbell and Roger Green to share personal memories of co-founder and former co-host Dr. Stephen Harrison.  Naim Alkhouri starts the conversation by describing how he met his "friend and mentor," Stephen. He recalls coming to San Antonio in 2017 to work with a different research group and contacti...

Send us Fan Mail Manal Abdelmalek and Naim Alkhouri join co-hosts Jörn Schattenberg, Louise Campbell and Roger Green to rshare some of their favorite "Harrisonisms" - words, phrases and verbal memes associated with co-founder and former co-host Dr. Stephen Harrison. Naim Alkhouri starts by stating two of his favorite Harrisonisms, two that SurfingMASH listeners know well: "is the ju...

Send us Fan Mail The sudden passing on April 23 of our co-founder and colleague Stephen Harrison sent shock waves throughout the global SLD community. This week, Manal Abdelmalek and Naim Alkhouri join Jörn Schattenberg, Louise Campbell and Roger Green to remember and pay tribute to an exceptional leader, role model and human being. 00:00:00 - Surf's Up: Season 5 Episode 14 Episode introducti...