(Vienna, 03 November 2023) Thomas Reiberger, a hepatologist at MedUni Vienna's Department of Medicine III, has taken up a professorship (§99/4) at the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, effective November 1, 2023.
Thomas Reiberger focuses in his scientific and clinical work on the development of new and optimized methods for diagnosis, prognosis assessment and effective therapies in chronic liver diseases.
In his clinical work he developed new antiviral treatment concepts for patients with viral hepatitis, optimized medical prophylaxis of variceal hemorrhage with non-selective beta-blockers in patients with portal hypertension and investigated non-invasive, ultrasound-based methods for the quantification of liver fat (steatosis) and liver scarring (fibrosis).
Based on findings from his basic research, a Christian Doppler Laboratory for Portal Hypertension and Liver Fibrosis was established, that aims at assessing molecular pathomechanisms in various in vivo models and in vitro platforms and performing pre-clinical studies on novel compounds developed for treatment of liver diseases.
Thomas Reiberger is Adjunct Principal Investigator at the Center for Molecular Medicine (CeMM) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. This has led to the development of artificial intelligence (AI)-based models that can predict the severity of portal hypertension in patients with liver disease based on 3 or 5 simple laboratory values (3P/5P), which can otherwise only be graduated by invasive measurements.
At the international level, Thomas Reiberger is an active member of the European (EASL) and American (AASLD) liver societies and serves as secretary of the Baveno Cooperation, which establishes international standards for the diagnosis and treatment of portal hypertension every five years.
Thomas Reiberger studied medicine at MedUni Vienna, where he also trained as a specialist in internal medicine with board certifications for gastroenterology and hepatology and for intensive care medicine. Max-Kade and Erwin-Schrödinger fellowships enabled a three-year research stay in the USA, where he developed a new immunocompetent mouse model for liver cancer, in which first findings on immunotherapy in liver cancer were obtained. In 2009 he was Researcher of the Month at MedUni Vienna, in 2011 he received the Venia docendi, in 2019 the Rising Star Award of the European Gastroenterology Society (UEG) and in 2020 the Emerging Leader Award of EASL.
With his clinical research group MOTION (Mechanisms of Portal Hypertension), recently funded by the Ludwig Boltzmann Society, Thomas Reiberger will conduct further research projects and clinical trials over the next eight years to develop novel diagnostic and prognostic methods and investigate novel treatment approaches in patients with liver cirrhosis and vascular liver diseases.