Prof. Francois Dufour

Prof. Jean-François Dufour studied mathematics at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and received his medical degree from the Geneva Medical School. After training in internal medicine at the University Hospital Geneva and the University Hospital Bern, he joined the laboratory of Professor I. Arias at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, USA where he studied the effects of calcium signaling on bile canaliculus. He then returned to the clinic to complete a gastroenterology fellowship with Professor M. Kaplan at the New England Medical Center and Tufts University. In 1997, Professor Dufour established his own laboratory at the University of Bern. He was the Clinic Director and Full Professor of Hepatology from 2011 to 2021. He transformed the Liver Unit into a national and international center of excellence for liver diseases. He is now director of the Centre des Maladies Digestives in Lausanne. Professor Dufour is a member of the AASLD, AGA, EASL, ACG, the Swiss Association for the Study of the Liver, and the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Gastroenterologie und Hepatologie. He is a founding member of the International Liver Cancer Association. He was twice a member of the Governing Board of EASL as a Scientific Committee Member and then as Educational Councillor. He was also a member of the UEG Educational Committee. Professor Dufour has a broad understanding of basic, translational and clinical research, its bottlenecks and the challenges in disseminating and exploiting knowledge. Professor Dufour has served as the principal investigator on multiple clinical studies, focusing on NASH and HCC. His laboratory explores the link between the fatty liver, physical activity and liver cancer. He was/is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Hepatology, Hepatology (section Highlights), GUT, Liver International and Clinical Sciences. Professor Dufour has published more than 300 peer-reviewed publications