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VIDEO: Genfit promotes NASH awareness as equally important as therapy

VIENNA — In this exclusive video from the International Liver Congress 2019, Dean Hum, PhD, chief scientific officer and chief operating officer of Genfit, discusses the company’s therapeutic and diagnostic pipeline as well as efforts toward disease awareness.

“Genfit, as a leader in the whole NASH space, we're involved in the key unmet needs ... in the whole NASH space,” Hum told Healio Gastroenterology and Liver Disease. “One is developing drugs and addressing the therapy of NASH patients and we’re looking at that by moving elafibranor forward. The other major unmet need is, of course, diagnostics.”

Hum said that it is going to be important to develop noninvasive techniques to “get around” the use of liver biopsies. In this field, Genfit is developing its NIS4 blood test for the diagnosis of NASH.

“The third piece of unmet need is disease awareness for NASH,” he said. “To address the unmet need area of disease awareness, what Genfit has done is place an endowment fund, what we call the NASH Education Program, or the NEP. The objective of the NASH Education Program is to build disease awareness for the patients as well as their families but to also build disease awareness for physicians.”

Last year, Genfit and the NEP set in place the first International NASH Day. This year, International NASH Day will be led by patient-advocacy groups including the NEP and take place on June 12.

Disclosure: Hum is the chief scientific officer and chief operating officer at Genfit.