Press release – For immediate release – 05:45pm CEST
Panelists will include four world-renowned key opinion leaders in the fields of hepatology, liver imaging, biomarker and non-invasive test development and clinical trial design. The round table will be held on September 7th, 2017 in Sophia Antipolis, France.
Median Technologies (ALMDT), the Imaging Phenomics Company®, announced today that it will lead a scientific and medical round table to discuss the application of its next generation imaging platform iBiopsy® for NASH. The round table panel will include four world-renowned key opinion leaders:
- Dr. Richard Jones, MD, MRCP, Vice President, General Medicine, Princeton, NJ, USA. Dr. Jones is a GMC registered UK Physician specializing in internal medicine, clinical pharmacology and cardiology. He qualified from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford and has spent more than 15 years in academic medicine in the UK. Dr. Jones has over 70 publications on various aspects of drug development. He worked in early and late phase drug development holding senior positions in several major pharmaceutical companies. He has experience in developing novel biomarkers and non-invasive tests and their application to clinical trial methodologies.
- Professor Rohit Loomba, MD, MHSc, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) CA, USA, is a Professor of Medicine (with tenure), Director of Hepatology, and Vice Chief, Division of Gastroenterology at UCSD. He is an internationally recognized thought leader in translational research and innovative clinical trial design in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and steatohepatitis (NASH), and in non-invasive assessment of steatosis and fibrosis using advanced imaging modalities.
- Dr. Michael Middleton, MD, PhD, University of California, San Diego, (UCSD) CA, USA. Together with others at UCSD, Dr. Middleton has developed and improved breath-hold quantitative Magnetic Resonance (MR) magnitude imaging and spectroscopic methods to assess liver fat, and has developed methods to assess the adequacy of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) proton density fat fraction (PDFF) and Magnetic Resonance Elastography (MRE) liver stiffness assessment measurements. Dr. Middleton and his group use MRI to assess liver fat content in clinical trials for the NASH Clinical Research Network and he currently serves on the Steering and Radiology Committees of the NASH CRN.
- Professor Massimo Pinzani , MD, PhD, FRCP, FAASLD, University College London. Massimo Pinzani is Professor of Medicine at University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom. He is a clinical and translational hepatologist, is the Sheila Sherlock Chair of Hepatology and Director of the UCL Institute for Liver and Digestive Health, Division of Medicine. Professor Pinzani is one of the pioneers in research dedicated to cellular and molecular mechanisms of liver fibrosis and relative diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.
The round table will aim at providing scientific and medical insights and recommendations to support the development and the strategic positioning of Median’s proprietary imaging phenomics platform iBiopsy® for Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH).
“Median Technologies is developing imaging biomarkers for the diagnosis and assessment of treatment response of NASH patients during clinical trials that will lead to the development of a Companion Diagnostic imaging test once a drug has been approved by the FDA. Our plan is to have the imaging biomarker validated during the clinical trial becoming the basis for the companion diagnostic. We have been evaluating various imaging protocols and modalities including CT contrast imaging and MR elastography combined with novel deep learning methodologies,” said Fredrik Brag, CEO of Median Technologies. “The round table outputs will nurture our Research and Product Development activities. We are proud to welcome these esteemed key opinion leaders as panelists.”
iBiopsy®, or Imaging Biomarker Phenotyping System, is a groundbreaking imaging platform that combines non-invasive image biomarkers with phenomics. This unique combination of science and technology is at the very core of precision medicine because it can provide insights into development of novel therapies and individualized treatment strategies. Remarkably, iBiopsy® can measure disease and treatment response without an invasive and costly biopsy. The initial application of iBiopsy® is for NASH, which is dramatically increasing in prevalence in the world. We are confident that this groundbreaking technology will bring new insights to better assess these liver diseases and will contribute to the emergence of new therapies for liver patients in need.