The Future of Healthcare - March 2022

Join researchers from University College London, St George’s University of London, and Richmond Research Institute for the second event in our research series – The Future of Healthcare – which focuses on hepatology.

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Discover the intricacies of assessing abnormal liver functions in clinical trial volunteers and gain insights from the latest drug development trials using RNAi therapeutics to target and treat non-alcoholic steatohepatitis.

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Speakers  

Professor Kevin Moore
Professor Kevin Moore is an expert in liver disease with over twenty years of experience working as a consultant in liver transplantation and general hepatology. He is triply accredited in hepatology, general internal medicine as well as Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Dr Paul Nioi
Dr Paul Nioi joined Alnylam in 2018 and leads the Discovery and Translational Research department along with the human genetics team. He leads the development of a research effort that focuses on identification of novel drug targets and RNAi-therapeutics, with a particular focus on cardiometabolic- and liver-diseases.  In this presentation, he will discuss two active drug discovery programs, within Alnylam, focused on the treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Dr Jorg Taubel
Dr Jorg Taubel is an expert in clinical pharmacology with a special interest in cardiac safety assessments. He has conducted more than 500 early phase studies in patients and healthy volunteers, usually in the capacity of Principal Investigator since 1995.

Dr Dominic Pimenta  
A former cardiology registrar, Dr Pimenta is now the Lead Specialty Research Physician at RRI, with a special interest in machine learning, digital health and cardiovascular care. 

Session one

When normal liver function veers towards abnormality: Understanding abnormal liver function tests

Professor Kevin Moore, Principle Clinical Research Fellow, UCL  

Professor Kevin Moore is an expert in liver disease and works as a consultant in liver transplantation and general hepatology. He is accredited in hepatology, general internal medicine, and Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. Here, Professor Moore provides insights for interpreting liver function tests that he has gained from over twenty years of experience.

Session two

Advances in RNAi therapeutics for the treatment of NASH

Dr. Paul Nioi, VP Discovery and Translational Research, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals

Dr. Nioi will discuss two active drug discovery programs, within Alnylam, focused on the treatment of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).  Alnylam utilizes RNA-interference (RNAi) as a means of knocking down the expression of disease-relevant genes in the liver.  Two programs will be covered, namely ALN-HSD and ALN-PNP.  ALN-HSD targets HSD17B13, which encodes a protein that is involved in driving inflammation in NAFLD.  In contrast, ALN-PNP is designed to knockdown the expression of PNPLA3, a mutant form of which is believed to predispose individuals to the development of NAFLD.  Both pre-clinical and clinical aspects of both programs will be highlighted.

Session three

Developing a non-invasive scoring system to predict NAFLD in clinical trial volunteers

Dr Dominic Pimenta, Lead Specialty Research Physician, RRI  

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) affects up to 1 in 4 of the global adult population and is a spectrum of disease from benign liver steatosis to steatohepatitis (NASH) to fibrosis, cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma and liver failure. The presence of NAFLD in clinical trial patients both affects drug metabolism as well as trial inclusion/exclusion criteria, and current non-invasive predictive tools are inadequate discriminators.

Here, Dr. Dom Pimenta will discuss the latest results from our observational study using blood, anthropometric and bioimpedance biomarkers to create a better tool to accurately detect NAFLD in the trial cohort and discuss our state of the art AI- processes and how they may change the paradigm of analysing biological systems.

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This face-to-face event is free to attend but places are limited to ensure social distancing.

To learn more about the event or to register, please email info@richmondpharmacology.com

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Event prerequisites

Your comfort and safety are our top priority so we will ensure social distancing is possible throughout the event and encourage all participants to wear a mask.

All delegates will need to show their vaccine passport and have a negative lateral flow test on arrival.

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