Biliary Disease (PDF)

Birmingham, UK. He is committed to discovery and translational science in immune-mediated liver disease and his research goals focus on identification and implementation of effective, personalised therapies for patients with immune-mediated liver diseases. Dr. Hirschfield graduated from Cambridge, and trained academically/clinically at UCL/Cambridge, before moving to Toronto. He was recruited in 2012 to develop the Birmingham autoimmune liver programme, since when he has exploited the unique clinical and scientific environment, establishing himself as a world leader and key opinion former. He has published over 145 papers and his work, with colleagues and collaborators include: a) discovery of novel genetic risk factors for PBC; b) application of immune based screening technology to understand immune mediated liver disease; c) development of internationally applied stratifiers of clinical outcome in autoimmune liver disease; d) design, conduct and reporting of early phase clinical trials in immune-mediated liver disease spanning Industry and Academic lead studies; e) leadership in NIHR/MRC funded national disease platforms (UK-PBC, UK-PSC, UK-Autoimmune; Training lead NIHR-Rare Disease TRC) and patient (PBC Foundation, PSC Support, AIH support) engagement.

Evaggelia Liaskou, BSc, PhD is a senior post-doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Liver Research and NIHR Biomedical Research Unit, Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her area of interest is in understanding the nature and function of lymphocytic infiltration in autoimmune liver disease, and she is the first author on a number of seminal papers in the field. Dr. Liaskou earned a BSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics at the University of Thrace, Greece, and a PhD degree in liver immunology at the University of Birmingham. As a Marie Curie Early Stage Career PhD fellow she also worked at the University of Turku in Finland for six months. Since 2012 she has been working with Dr Hirschfield with research interests on the immunobiology of autoimmune liver diseases. As a post-doctoral research fellow she has been awarded a Sheila Sherlock Short-Term Training Fellowship, which allowed her to spend three months at the Norwegian PSC Centre in Oslo, Norway. PSC Partners Seeking a Cure and Wellcome Trust ISSF are some of the other funders that have supported her research, in addition to salary support from NIHR and MRC (UK-PBC).