Prof. Karlsen: Of course. I am a bit biased because I am also responsible for the congress, but it is very hard for me to say I do not enjoy it. I really appreciate it and it is going really well. I would say we have had a very successful meeting at a wonderful venue here in Paris. I am having a very good time amongst all our colleagues and friends from all over the world. It has become a very big meeting. Back in 1966, there were around 70 people attending this congress. Today, we have more than 10000 people coming here from all over the world. More than 120 countries are represented at the meeting. It has become a truly international event in hepatology, probably the most international meeting in the world. It is also nice to see a big attendance from China. China is one of the top ten countries represented at the meeting. We are very proud to have all of the Chinese attendees here. When it comes to the highlights of the congress, I would say we have two main parts to the meeting. There is the scientific part, where we have all of the original scientific presentations. We had around 2700 abstracts submitted to the meeting. We could only accept about 60% of those, so around 1500 original scientific projects are being presented at the meeting. To me, as a scientist, that is the highlight of the meeting. Of course, in addition to that, we also have a big educational program. This is serving up a variety of topics. We have categorized the educational program into viral hepatitis, fatty liver, end stage liver disease, autoimmune liver disease and so on. Whatever your interests in hepatology are, you will always have a place to go at EASL. One feature of the meeting that is also important to me is that we try to bring different specialties together. Working in hepatology, you are never working alone. You work together with surgeons, specialists in infectious medicine, oncologists and so on, and we try to bring partner societies and all these specialties to our meeting to have discussions about our patients. I think this is a key thing we still have to achieve with meetings. Many activities can now be carried out on the internet. Information is a click away. But you cannot meet and interact with other people and you cannot make friends like you can at a physical meeting. That is why these meeting are important and it is still important to bring people together.

 

Prof. Karlsen: The main developments we have seen in hepatology have followed different tracks. Starting with viral hepatitis, firstly, we have seen that we can cure hepatitis C patients. Hepatitis C has become a public health problem and we have been dealing with that extensively, and that is reflected in a large increase in public health submissions to the meeting. So public health issues, particularly in hepatitis C, is one highlight. In hepatitis B, there have been strong developments on the translational side of things, where we are seeing a push towards HBV cure. When and if we will get there is an open question, but there is an expansion of activity in that field. The second large development is in research related to fatty liver. We have seen a huge rise in submissions on fatty liver related topics. There are preclinical, phase I and phase II clinical trials being presented at the meeting to an extent we have never seen before. It is a predominant topic in the programming, maybe even surpassing viral hepatitis in some sessions. Also, interestingly, we are seeing developments in liver cancer. We have many new drugs for liver cancer finally. We haven’t had too many options in the past. We are now seeing a lot of research interest associated with that. Finally, I work in a field of hepatology that is relatively small - autoimmune and cholestatic liver diseases. This is also a field of hepatology where there hasn’t been much to offer patients in the past, but now there is the appearance of drugs in phase I and phase II trials. Overall, this is a specialty that is developing towards new medications that will benefit our patients.

 

Prof. Karlsen: It is a big question. I am grateful to the WHO for setting the elimination goals. I think this is an important initiative that needs to be dealt with. Of course, strategies will vary depending on whether you are working with HCV or HBV. What we see from our public health programming is that a lot of emphasis is being placed on testing and access to care. This is where the big challenges are. We need to find the patients and not only get a diagnosis, but also get them into treatment. Now that hepatitis C drugs are available, the next step is to get them to the patients. On top of all of that, of course, are preventive strategies. These strategies often lag behind when new drugs are being developed, but prevention is going to be crucial to the success of viral hepatitis elimination. Into that arena come vaccines and vaccination programs, particularly in relation to hepatitis B. This is where we have to put the emphasis going forward. It is a big job. Whether it is realistic or not, I am not sure, but it is good to have goals and to strive to achieve them.