S5 - E17.3 - Previewing EASL Congress 2024: Jörn Schattenberg Joins The MASLD Conversation

Surfing the MASH Tsunami

This conversation starts with Jörn Schattenberg joining the conversation. The main points are two abstracts, one reviewed by Jörn and the other by Aleksander Krag.
As Hannes finishes discussing his abstract, Jörn joins the podcast. While Michelle looks for an abstract she highlighted on which Jörn is an author, Jörn discusses a panel that Hannes will chair on the future of hepatology, at which Jörn will speak about artificial intelligence. Hannes shares his excitement about a session that looks to take a peak into the future, framing it in the context of the EASL vision and mission.
The abstract Michelle selects for Jörn is titled The cause of death, mortality rates and the role of sociodemographic risk factors and biomarkers in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis in more than 18,000 real-world patients from the United States. Jörn shares the group's enthusiasm for large sample sets of "real-world" patients, this one obtained through the Optum health registry, and discusses some of the outputs of the research, notably including the association with EGFR and some "very nice" genetics aspects.
Roger asks the panel each to discuss one of their own abstracts they consider important. Aleksander describes a Galaxy consortium database of 900 people with a range of steatotic liver disease severity. The "true multi-omics" study incorporated "18 layers of omics" and also host genetic factors. He goes on to discuss the way the group dove into this massive set of data and how the results of this study and others like it will open a "new, new world of biomarkers." He describes the immense analytical needs for a data set with 900 cases and 18 layers of omics, which required analysis of "10 to the 11th power" to analyze." In the end, the data set identified 500 "highly significant" variables.

Jörn notes that while the data is extremely complex, it reaffirms the value of some of the pathways we have been studying. The challenge, Jörn notes, is to make it "easy" for the clinician. To Aleksander, "that's the thing...we need to bring" if studies like these are to become actionable. Roger comments that in complexity theory, complexity can produce simplicity if analysts do not seek too high a level of granularity. Aleksander sees the solution in creating tools based on host genetics, which are stable for life and which "everybody has."