Need-to-Know NAFLD

Naim Alkhouri, MD, is the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Chief of Transplant Hepatology, and Director of the Fatty Liver Program at Arizona Liver Health (ALH) in Phoenix, Arizona. Prior to joining ALH, Dr. Alkhouri served as the director of the Metabolic Health Center at the Texas Liver Institute and Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of Texas (UT) Health in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Alkhouri completed his Gastroenterology and Transplant Hepatology training at the renowned Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was also appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine and Director of the Metabolic Liver Disease Clinic at the Cleveland Clinic Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute. Dr. Alkhouri is a key opinion leader in the field of NASH therapeutics and an advisor/ consultant to many pharmaceutical and biomarker development companies. He is Principal Investigator on several multicenter global NASH trials and a member of the AASLD NASH Special Interest Group (NASH SIG).

Dr. Alkhouri has been published in more than 200 publications, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Journal of Hepatology. He presents his work at both national and international medical conferences. Among many research awards, Dr. Alkhouri received the American College of Gastroenterology Junior Faculty Development Award to study the analysis of breath volatile organic compounds to diagnose nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

Stephen A. Harrison, MD, is the Founder and Chairman of Pinnacle Clinical Research and Co-Founder and Chairman of Summit Clinical Research, LLC in San Antonio, Texas. He is board-certified in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology. Dr. Harrison earned his medical degree from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine residency and gastroenterology fellowship at Brooke Army Medical Center before completing a 4-year advanced liver disease fellowship at Saint Louis University. Dr. Harrison served as a Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and is currently a Visiting Professor of Hepatology at Radcliffe Department of Medicine, University of Oxford.

Dr. Harrison served as a Colonel in the United States Army. Retiring in 2016, he concluded 20 years of dedicated service to his country. During his army tenure, he served as the Director of Graduate Medical Education at Brooke Army Medical Center, Associate Dean for the San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Education Consortium and Gastroenterology Consultant to the Army Surgeon General. He is a past Associate Editor for Hepatology and Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics journals. He is internationally known for studies in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) with more than 300 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature Medicine, Lancet, JAMA, Gastroenterology, Journal of Hepatology and Hepatology. He has an H-Index of 93.