April 24, 2024 EF CLIF Governing Board welcomes new Director Prof. Richard Moreau will add valuable expertise to the recently established EF CLIF Governing Board where he will serve as Director for the next 3 years.

Prof. Moreau has been involved with the EF CLIF since its establishment. He was the lead investigator of EF CLIF’s flagship studies CANONIC, ACLARA and DISCOVERY under the umbrella of both the EASL-CLIF Consortium and the ENTR-CLIF. His main contributions to the field of hepatology and inflammation include the characterization of acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) as a distinct syndrome, the description of kidney pathology in patients with hepatorenal syndrome, the introduction of the use of terlipressin for type 1 hepatorenal syndrome, and the identification of the hemodynamic, metabolic and transcriptional mechanisms of septic shock in patients with cirrhosis.

Prof. Moreau served as the Grifols Chair Deputy Director from 2016 until 2020, and as Honorary Director since 2021. He also served as Chair of the EF CLIF Scientific Advisory Board from 2020 until 2023.

“To me, it is a great honor being appointed as Director of EF CLIF, which is the home of decompensated cirrhosis. It is also a great challenge because the former Director, Vicente Arroyo did a fantastic job during the last 15 years creating the EASL-CLIF Consortium and then EF CLIF. Indeed, research conducted under the umbrella of these structures gave rise to a huge amount of high-level scientific publications which provided an evidence-based definition for acute-on-chronic liver failure (ACLF) and an extensive description of the clinical, cellular and molecular landscape of acutely decompensated cirrhosis, particularly ACLF.”

“My vision for the next years is totally inspired by what has been the success of EF CLIF until now. With the help of Anna Bosch, the Data Management Center and members of the EF CLIF Governing Board, I will take care that EF CLIF could conduct relevant clinical and translational studies with the following objectives:

• The first objective will be to perform new clinical interventional studies involving the huge network of European liver units that are affiliated to the EASL-CLIF Consortium led by Paolo Angeli. Another mission of the clinical research chapter of EF CLIF will be to publish results of the last large-volume observational study conducted by EF CLIF, the CHANCE study, which investigated liver transplantation for severe ACLF under the leadership of Thierry Gustot and Rajiv Jalan.

• The second objective will be to develop studies using granular data collected in the three first seminal observational studies (CANONIC, PREDICT, ACLARA) and merged in a “metadata base” whose harmonization has been obtained via the joined efforts of Javier Fernández, Head of Clinical Operations, and the Data Management Center led by Cristina Sánchez. This second objective will be the focus of the Inspiring and Writing Group led by Thierry Gustot.

• The third objective will be to further characterize cellular and molecular features of systemic inflammation in well-annotated subgroups of patients with acutely decompensated cirrhosis This will be the mission of the EF CLIF chapter dedicated to translational research, which is directed by Joan Clària. In addition, the translational chapter will address the major question of alterations in gut microbiota associated with impairment of intestinal barrier function, which result in abnormal microbial translocation (involving viable microbes and/or microbial by-products) and subsequent perturbations of host immunity. Overall, translational research conducted under the umbrella of EF CLIF should identify cellular and/or molecular targets for novel therapeutic approaches that may be of interest for current or potential industrial partners. During the next years, I will favor the diversification of the sources of funding for the Foundation through new partnerships with the industry and application to new European grants. The process of diversification of funding has been started at the beginning of 2024 with the creation of a new partnership with GENFIT which is a biotechnological company.”

Prof. Moreau will serve in his position until the end of 2026. He joins other appointed Governing Board members Professor Paolo Angeli, Professor Thierry Gustot, Professor Jonel Trebicka, Professor Rajiv Jalan, Professor Joan Clària, Dr. med. Javier Fernández, Mrs. Cristina Sánchez-Garrido, and Dr. Anna Bosch.