Educational activities

COORDINATOR

Prof. Dr. Anna LICATA, MD

COORDINATOR

Dr. Marina VILLANUEVA PAZ

COORDINATOR

Prof. Dr. Jane Grove

YOUNG INVESTIGATORS AFTERWORKS SERIESCOORDINATOR

Prof. Ann DALY

Monthly International Seminar Series on Liver Toxicity and Steatotic Liver Disease and different EASL studio topics for DHILI will be organised at a later stage.

As a proposal within our educational activities, we will be launching from January a series of talks on Liver Toxicity and Steatotic Liver Disease, ONCE monthly, given by international experts in the field. The session outline would be a talk of around 45 min with 15 min left for discussion. Conferences will be held on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at 16.30h (CET) starting from January 17th 2024.

These international seminar series are the result of an outstanding collaboration between the EASL DHILI Consortium (https://easldhiliconsortium.eu/) and the Halt-RONIN (UKRI-Horizon Europe) https://halt-ronin.com/

The objectives are:

  • to improve collaboration between different group experts encompassing clinical investigators, researchers, basic scientists, industry partners and regulators.
  • To foster scientific progress by disseminating the latest breakthroughs in research on hepatotoxicity and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease

José C. Fernández-Checa is Professor of the CSIC, Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de México (2019) and currently Professor at the Department of Medicine at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, California). His scientific interest has focused on the study of lipid interactions at the cellular and subcellular level and their role in chronic liver diseases, such as metabolic fatty liver disease (MASLD), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and liver damage by drugs (DILI). His research has been supported by national and international public and private agencies, such as NIAAA/NIH, HORIZON-HLTH-2022-EU, BBVA, Strong Foundation NPC USA and currently he is a partner of an international consortium funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI-NIH) to investigate MASH-driven HCC.
His presentation identifies hepatic mitochondrial derived 27-hydroxycholesterol, an oxysterol whose generation is controlled by STARD1-dependent cholesterol delivery to mitochondrial inner membrane, as a previously unrecognized link between MASH development and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Although MASH is an advanced chronic liver disease of high prevalence due to its association with the obesity pandemic, CVD is one of the leading causes of mortality among MASH patients. Targeting hepatic STARD1 or 27-hydroxycholesterol may offer a novel therapeutic opportunity for MASH-driven CVD.