Hedersföreläsare

Allan Spigelman

Hedersföreläsning till minne av Bengt Ihre

Hereditary Gastrointestinal Cancer – Past, Present and Future (From polyps and genes to individual treatment)
Onsdag 13 maj, kl. 11.45-12.30

On completion of his surgical training in Sydney, Australia, Allan moved to London to further his operative experience. This led to his research into Polyposis, at the time when the search was on for the genes that harboured causative mutations for this syndrome as well as for other bowel cancer syndromes, most notably Lynch syndrome. His seminal 1989 Lancet publication on the upper GI tract in Polyposis sits within the top 2% of citations, leading to the worldwide adoption of the Spigelman classification for duodenal polyposis. Pari-passu with this work was a body of research into the carcinogenic potential of bile within the upper GI tract, which formed a major part of his Thesis and that of others. This work is ongoing at St Marks Hospital, London with two PhD students currently completing their Theses for Imperial College and for which Allan is an external examiner.

Allan also directed the Breast Cancer Service at St Mary’s Hospital, London at the time when the hunt was on for the BRCA genes, with which he also collaborated and which allowed him to observe the opportunities for a new direction in medicine, which has increasingly led to the incorporation of cancer genetic assessment into gastroenterology practice, as well as other fields.

Allan’s interests in the politics of medicine led him to be appointed Australia’s first Director of Clinical Governance, with subsequent appointments to the Medical Board (State regulatory authority) and Health District Boards.

He was appointed Director of Cancer Services at St Vincent’s Hospital in 2006 and identified a need to improve collaborative research between scientists working in the adjacent Garvan Medical Research Institute and clinicians at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney. This led directly to the significant fund raising for and construction of a new cancer centre (The Kinghorn), of which he was Foundation Director. Here cancer researchers, clinicians and patients are now co-located and within which is the Cancer Genetics Unit. This Unit services most of the state’s regional and rural areas (the state being over 800,000 square km; nearly double the size of Sweden) and has grown year on year from 10 new referrals in 1998 to around 2,000 in 2019. The Unit provides evidence based and treatment focused advice to patients and clinicians.

Sigrid Elsenbruch

Hedersföreläsning till minne av Franz Bárány

When gut feelings turn into visceral pain: Placebo and nocebo mechanisms in the gut-brain axis.
Torsdag 14 maj, kl. 11.30-12.15

Sigrid Elsenbruch is since April 2020 Director of the Dept. of Medical Psychology & Sociology at the Medical Faculty of Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. Prior to this, she held the position of Professor of Experimental Psychobiology at the Institute of Medical Psychology & Behavioral Immunobiology and served as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University Hospital Essen in Germany. Her interdisciplinary research focusses on psychological aspects and underlying neurobiological mechanisms of the gut-brain axis in human visceral pain, especially in irritable bowel syndrome.

Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and other grant organizations, she has accomplished multiple research studies on placebo and nocebo effects in visceral pain. This includes brain imaging studies to elucidate the neural mechanisms mediating effects of expectations as well as pain-related learning and memory processes in healthy volunteers and patients with chronic visceral pain. This research is closely connected to her work on stress and fear, providing evidence on the role of emotions and cognitions in visceral hypersensitivity, with implications for the pathophysiology and treatment of disorders of gut-brain interactions like IBS and other conditions characterized by burdening visceral symptoms.

Thomas de Lange

Hedersföreläsning till minne av Lennart Wehlin

Artificiell intelligens för bättre endoskopidiagnostik
Fredag 15 maj, kl. 11.15-12.00

Thomas de Lange arbetar sedan november 2019 som överläkare på medicinsk avdelning, Sahlgrenska Universitetssjukhuset, Mölndal och kombinerar detta med 40% forskning fördelat på två forskningstjänster. Thomas har sin specialistutbildning inom invärtesmedicin från Norra Älvsborgs länssjukhus (1997) och inom gastroenterologi från Ullevål Universitetssykehus (1999). Han har arbetat som gastroenterolog vid Ullevål sykehus, Rikshospitalet och Bærum sykehus i Oslo. I de två senaste tjänsterna har han arbetat som ledare för sektion för colorectal cancerscreening på Kreftregisteret, Oslo och som ledare, associate professor på Regionalt Utdannings senter for leger i spesialisering, på Oslo Universitets sykehus och Universitetet i Oslo.

Hans forskning har fokuserat dels på utveckling av digitala lösningar och verktyg för att förbättra kvaliteten av endoskopi och dels på att undersöka fördelar och nackdelar med screening för colorectal cancer. Han har sedan 2014 samarbetat med Simula Metropolitan Department for Digital Engineering, Oslo, Norge, med at utveckla artificiell intelligens (AI) med algoritmer för endoskopisk påvisning/ karakterisering av förändringar och anatomiska landmärken i mag-tarmkanalen. Utvecklingen av algoritmerna baserar sig på maskininlärning (ML), en gren av AI. ML tekniker omfattar allt från enkla metoder med bildanalys till avancerade neurala nätverk, Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) som används vid s.k. ’deep learning’. Utveckling av CNN algoritmer erfordrar omfattande bilddatabaser med klassificerade endoskopibilder. Lovande forskningsresultat har lett till start av firman Augere Medical A.S finansierad av Norges Forskningsråd och Innovasjon Norge.