S5 SPECIAL 4 - Reviewing EASL Congress: Sven Francque

Send us Fan MailThis week, Surfing the MASH Tsunami looks back on interviews Roger Green conducted during the EASL Congress itself. This conversation with Hepatology Key Opinion Leader and EASL Educational Councillor Sven Francque took place 90 minutes after the EASL Congress closed. The discussion focuses on plans and hopes for the future, both the future of MASLD diagnosis and treatment and of the EASL Congress itself. The conversation starts with Sven discussing all the positive energy coming from the Congress, not only for MASLD but for the entire Liver community. He describes the ambiance of the meeting as feeling "vibrant," and with a lot of interaction. He goes on to discuss the CPG guideline committee on which he was a member. (See Season 5 Episode 21 for a fuller discussion of CPG). Sven goes on to share the vision of disease that led to this broad, forward-looking guideline update. From there, we discuss positive results from a set of early-stage clinical trials, with Sven commenting specifically on tirzepatide, efruxifermin and an array of positive phase two trials, one of which is lanifibranor, which presented its results previous year. Sven also finds two studies that use different methodologies but evaluated the prognostic value of liver stiffness to be important. He discusses the value of the new nomenclature and how it allows researchers to look more broadly at the entire steatotic liver disease category. We close by talking once more about the positive body of drug development studies, which Surfing MASH discusses in greater detail in Season 5 Episode 20.