This conversation contains the first half of Roger Green's interview with Global Liver Institute Vice President, Liver Programs Jeff McIntyre, during which the two discuss what Jeff considered the key strategic takeaways for GLI from the various EASL Congress presentations, abstracts and discussions.

Jeff focuses on the "overriding sense of optimism" coming from the multiple pieces of positive drug data. He cites the data on Boehringer Ingelheim's survodutide, the follow-up work on Madrigal's resmetirom, an anticipated presentation on semaglutide at the AASLD in November, and strong FGF-21 results as proof that we are beginning to develop multiple robust, safe and effective modes of action for drugs to treat (at least pre-cirrhotic) MASH. His second positive point is that due to the drug trials and nomenclature change, GLI and other advocates are starting to have "more enlightened discussions" about MASLD in the context of the whole patient and related metabolic conditions. As a result, he comes to the third point, which is that multiple modes of action will teach us why what works in one patient might not in another and, ultimately, reshape clinical trials so that the target might not be fibrosis (or at least not only fibrosis), but instead exactly how each drug works. Jeff envisions this line of inquiry as a step down the path away from requiring biopsy.