William Bernal, Professor of Hepatology and Liver Intensive Care Medicine, School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences

Lecture: Failing Livers & Rescue Strategies

William Bernal is a clinician at King’s College Hospital and has been based in London and South-East England for his whole career, developing and delivering treatment to critically-ill patients with liver failure.

He trained in general medicine, hepatology and critical care to work at the Liver Intensive Therapy Unit (LITU) at Kings College Hospital, supporting one of the largest liver transplant programmes in Europe. Throughout his clinical career, he has worked with critically ill people with liver disease and developed a research portfolio around liver failure and transplantation.

William and the team at the LITU have an international reputation for developing the most effective ways of caring for patients with liver failure, how to identify people in need of emergency transplants and how to overcome practical challenges to help them survive major surgery when critically unwell.

William also researches the pathophysiology of liver failure and understanding the basic mechanisms of people with the illness to modify their disease course and target treatments specific to their needs.

“When I first started working on the LITU it was the most exciting place I had ever been, and that excitement has continued with me ever since” commented William. It is obvious how someone would be so excited about a career in such an important and life-saving area of work.

Richard Thompson, Professor of Molecular Hepatology. School of Immunology & Microbial Sciences

Lecture: Bile

Richard Thompson began his career as a paediatrician, specialising in liver disease, at King’s College Hospital. Following advice from Alex Mowat, to pursue a more research-focused career, Richard specialised in the genetics of liver disease and has focussed on this area since 1994.

With advances in technology and increased ability to examine genetic information, Richard and his research group have been able to closely examine the physiology of bile production. By examining what is considered ‘normal’ physiology, it is possible to diagnose disease much more readily.

Richard made a crucial discovery in liver disease by identifying a key transporter in the liver which had an influence on patients who had previously required transplants. Richard commented that over the past 20 years, the group has gone from simply identifying disease to very effective treatment methods because of advances in technology.

Another area of interest for Richard is using genetics to identify liver disease in children. His group tests a whole suite of genes to identify liver disease very early on, as a form of detection. This is novel as these methods were previously used to confirm the results of biochemical tests at a much later stage of the disease progression.