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Prof Debbie Shawcross

Professor of Hepatology and Chronic Liver Failure

Year Qualified
1996
Qualifications
BSc; MB.BS (Distinct); PhD; FRCP
Specialty
Hepatology

Special Interests

  • Acute Alcoholic Hepatitis
  • Acute liver failure
  • acute-on-chronic liver failure
  • Advanced Chronic Liver Disease
  • Alcohol-related liver disease
  • Ammonia metabolism
  • Anterior abdominal wall defect
  • Cirrhosis
  • complications of cirrhosis
  • hepatic encephalopathy
  • Hepatorenal Syndrome
  • Liver disease
  • Liver immunology
  • Liver transplantation
  • Oral and Gut Microbiome
  • Portal Hypertension
  • Portopulmonary hypertension

Biography

Professor Debbie Shawcross is a Clinician Scientist and Professor of Hepatology and Chronic Liver Failure based at the Institute of Liver Studies, King’s College London and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. She heads the Gut Microbial Manipulation and Chronic Liver Failure Laboratory (Shawcross Laboratory) in the James Black Centre.

She was awarded a 5-year HEFCE Clinical Senior Lectureship in 2008 and has a specific interest in the complications of chronic liver disease and liver failure syndromes. She is a global key opinion leader in hepatic encephalopathy and has a specific research interest in why patients with advanced chronic liver disease are susceptible to developing infection. A dysfunctional gut microbiome plays a key role in patients with cirrhosis by influencing the rate of progression to terminal liver and a major goal for her research programme is to develop interventions which normalise the gut microbiome including faecal microbiota transplantation.

She is the Chief Investigator of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) EME-funded PROMISE Trial investigating faecal microbiota transplantation as a treatment for patients with alcohol and metabolic-related cirrhosis and Principal Investigator of the EU Hosrioon 20:20-funded MICROB-PREDICT Trial.

She is the Clinical Co-theme Lead of Microbes in Health and Disease (Guy’s and St Thomas’ Trust NIHR Biomedical Research Centre) and Senior Personal Tutor in GKT School of Medicine.

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