Anish Patel, DO, FACG
Course Founder and Director; Panelist Moderator
Anish Patel, DO, LTC, FACG currently serves as the Medical Director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center and Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Brooke Army Medical Center in Fort Sam Houston, Texas. He currently manages the largest and only IBD center within the military and is the only formally trained IBD specialist within the Department of Defense.
Dr. Patel is a graduate of Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. He completed his initial two years of Internal Medicine residency at Brooke Army Medical Center and finished his third year of residency at William Beaumont Army Medical Center. He subsequently completed his Gastroenterology fellowship at Brooke Army Medical Center.
After completing his Gastroenterology fellowship in 2010, Dr. Patel was assigned to Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center where he served as the Chief of the Division of Gastroenterology from 2013-2015. In 2015, he was selected as the first military Gastroenterology physician to complete an Inflammatory Bowel Disease fellowship and graduated from Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, NY in 2016. He returned to Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center where he started the first hepatology and IBD clinic and subsequently transferred to Brooke Army Medical Center in 2017.
To date, Dr. Patel has authored over 30 manuscripts and actively an investigator on 5 active clinical trials for experimental IBD medications at Brooke Army Medical Center. He is actively participating in 15 investigator-initiated projects and was awarded a pilot grant through the American College of Gastroenterology for pioneering research in the transition of active duty IBD patients from active military service into the VA system (first active military GI physician awarded this grant). He is a reviewer for 4 major medical journals to include the American Journal of Gastroenterology.
Dr. Patel’s honors include Brooke Army Medical Center’s scholarship in action award (2020) and the Army Medical Department’s prestigious ‘9A’ proficiency designator. He also received the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation Uniting to Care & Cure Award in 2020. He is currently the San Antonio Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation Chapter Mission president and a member of the executive board.
Jean-Frédéric Colombel, MD
Kitchen Sink: Management of Refractory Crohn's Disease
Dr. Colombel is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust Inflammatory Bowel Disease Research Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.
Jean-Frédéric Colombel has been the director of the Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center since January 2013, where with colleagues he has built an “IBD Home”. Here, patients can benefit from the most advanced and coordinated care, including access to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) specialists, surgeons, psychologists, nutritionists, pharmacists, social workers and affiliated health professionals.
Professor Colombel began his career at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Lille, France in 1980 where he was Professor of Hepato-Gastroenterology from 1991, and Head of the Department of Gastroenterology from 2010 to 2012.
Since 1984, his research has focused on IBD. Thanks to the development of multiple local, national and international collaborations, he has been able to contribute to important advances in the pathophysiology of IBD.
Professor Colombel has trained several generations of fellows both in the US and in Europe, and many of them are now key opinion leaders in IBD in their respective countries. This leadership in IBD has been recognized and he was elected as the President of the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) (2008–2010) and Chair of the International Organization for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IOIBD) (2010–2012). Professor Colombel was awarded the United European Gastroenterology Federation (UEGF) Research Prize in 2009 and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation (CCF) Clinical Research Award in 2014.
The main concretization of Professor Colombel’s work has been the publication as primary author or co-author of more than 942 peer-reviewed papers, most of them in the domain of IBD, which has made him one of the most published gastroenterologists in the world. Professor Colombel has been an associate editor of major gastroenterology journals including Gut, Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Gastroenterology.
John G. Gancayco, MD
Review of Current Therapy Options in IBD
Dr. John Gancayco is the Program Director for the San Antonio Uniformed Services Health Sciences Consortium (SAUSHEC) gastroenterology fellowship program. He is responsible for the education and training of the Air Force and Army gastroenterology fellows at Brooke Army Medical Center (BAMC). The SAUSHEC Gastroenterology Fellowship program is the largest Department of Defense medicine subspecialty training program and one of the largest clinical gastroenterology training programs in the U.S. Dr. Gancayco is also the primary investigator of 12 clinical trials studying inflammatory bowel disease, esophageal disorders, and infectious diarrhea. He currently holds the rank of Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) and Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio.
Dr. Gancayco entered the Air Force in 2001 as a medical student at USUHS in Bethesda, MD. He majored in English literature and received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Prior to medical school, he received a Research Training Award to study DNA repair in cancer patients at the National Institutes of Health. He completed his Internal Medicine residency at Wilford Hall Medical Center. He then completed his gastroenterology fellowship at Yale New Haven Hospital. During his fellowship, he studied colon cancer screening and completed courses through the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. He published his research in several peer-reviewed journals. He then served as Chief of Gastroenterology at Okinawa Naval Hospital. Prior to his current assignment, he served as Associate Program Director for gastroenterology fellowship for two years at BAMC.
Dr. Gancayco is a member of the American College of Gastroenterology and American Gastroenterology Association. He serves on the publications committee for Texas Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.
Laurie Keefer, PhD
Resilience-Based IBD Care for the Gastroenterologist
Laurie Keefer, PhD is a clinical health psychologist and behavioral intervention scientist specializing in Inflammatory Bowel Disease with extensive experience in psychosocial care integration within GI settings.
She received her PhD from SUNY Albany and completed a residency and postdoc at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Dr Keefer is currently an Associate Professor and Director of the Gaining Resilience through Transitions [GRITTTM]-IBD subspecialty medical home at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in NYC, overseeing a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and scientists to provide early, effective psychosocial care for high risk pediatric and adult patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.
Her current research program focuses on resilience and the application of positive psychology interventions in this population.
Nicole Harrison, MD
Quality of Care in IBD
Dr. Harrison attended Amherst College where she participated in research on the impact of water quality on the evolution of virulence in cholera. After college, she moved to Boston, MA and worked in the Dranoff/Hodi at Dana Farber Cancer Institute where therapeutic cancer vaccines using Adjuvant Therapy with Ilpilimumab was being studied before moving to Washington, DC to work in the Department of Justice’s Office of Vaccine Ligation during the Autism Omnibus Hearings. Following that, she studied medicine at Tufts and completed her residency and GI fellowship at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where she developed an interest in inflammatory bowel diseases.
Miguel Regueiro, MD
Navigating the Biologic Highway in IBD
Miguel Regueiro earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania, his medical degree at Drexel (Hahnemann) University and completed his internal medicine internship, residency, and clinical and research fellowship training in gastroenterology at Harvard Medical School’s Beth Israel Hospital.
Dr. Regueiro was Professor of Medicine and Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine from 2000 to 2018. There he served as the IBD Clinical Medical Director, Senior Medical Lead of Specialty Medical Homes, was Professor with Tenure, and honored as the UPMC Endowed Chair for Patient Centered Care in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.
Dr. Regueiro is currently the Chair of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Vice Chair of the Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He serves as Medical Co-Chair of Digestive Disease and Surgical Institute Research Governance committee and is Professor of Medicine at the Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. He also holds the Pier C. and Renee A. Borra Family Endowed Chair in Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Digestive Disease and Surgery Institute.
Dr. Regueiro’s main clinical and research interest is Inflammatory Bowel Diseases with a focus on the natural course of these diseases and postoperative prevention of Crohn’s disease. Recently, he has been involved in transformative medicine initiatives and developing new models of healthcare, including the first-of-its kind specialty medical home for IBD. Dr. Regueiro is investigating alternative models of care in population-based health that integrates patients, payers, providers, pharmaceutical industry, and other facets of healthcare delivery around these novel programs.
Parakkal Deepak, MBBS, MS, FACG
Non-Invasive Assessment of Disease Activity/Response in IBD
Parakkal Deepak is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine and clinical investigator in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Center in the Division of Gastroenterology at the Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) in St. Louis, Missouri. He joined the division after completing his fellowship training in gastroenterology, a Masters in Clinical and Translational Science and additional advanced fellowship training in IBD at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. He received his medical degree from the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER) in Pondicherry, India and completed his medical residency training at the University of Chicago (NorthShore) program. He is a Fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology where he serves as the Chair of the Digital Communications and Publications Committee and was selected into the Young Physician Leadership Scholars program. He is also a member of the Chapter Medical Advisory Committee of the Mid America Chapter and an Associate Editor of the Crohn’s and Colitis 360 journal of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation.
Dr. Deepak's current research interests are centered around using non-invasive tools including computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and biomarkers in the assessment of transmural disease activity, response to medical therapy in Crohn’s disease and metabolic syndrome. His research is funded through a Junior faculty Development Award by the American College of Gastroenterology and investigator-initiated grants. Recent interests funded by the American Gastroenterological Association and the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology center around application of image segmentation and 3D printing techniques in improving the precision of multidisciplinary management of perianal Crohn’s disease. He is also a co-investigator on NIH funded studies and the site-principal investigator for multiple Phase 2 and 3 trials of novel biologics and small molecules in Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis and the SPARC IBD cohort of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation.
Bruce Sands, MD, MS
Update on Novel Therapies for IBD
Bruce Sands is the Dr. Burrill B. Crohn Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY.
Dr. Sands is an expert in the management of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) and has earned an international reputation for his care of patients with complex and refractory disease. Dr. Sands was awarded his BA and MD from Boston University, and trained in internal medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. After completing GI fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School and served as the Acting Chief of the Gastrointestinal Unit at MGH before moving to Mount Sinai in 2010 as Chief of the Dr. Henry D. Janowitz Division of Gastroenterology.
Dr. Sands is widely recognized for his innovative treatment of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis and for his clinical investigations of new therapeutics. Dr. Sands' research also explores IBD epidemiology and includes the creation of a population-based cohort of IBD in Rhode Island, a project funded by both the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Sands has served as an Associate Editor for the journal Gastroenterology, and has published over 200 original manuscripts in leading journals such as Gut, Gastroenterology, and the American Journal of Gastroenterology. He was the lead investigator of the landmark studies ACCENT 2, UNIFI and VARSITY, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Sands is a past chair of the Clinical Research Alliance of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America and served as Chair of the Immunology, Microbiology and Inflammatory Bowel Disease Section of the American Gastroenterological Association. Additionally, Dr. Sands was the Chair of the International Organization for the Study of IBD (IOIBD). In 2016 Dr. Sands was awarded the Dr. Henry Janowitz Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America, that organization’s highest honor.
Harry Thomas, MD
Treat to Target and Therapeutic Monitoring
Dr. Thomas graduated from the University of Cambridge with a bachelor's degree in natural sciences and received a medical degree from the University of Oxford. In addition, he received a master’s degree in public health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. After serving as a house officer in the U.K. National Health Service, he completed his internship and residency in medicine and fellowship in gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He moved to Austin in 2014 and practiced at Baylor Scott & White where he was an assistant professor of medicine at Texas A&M prior to joining Austin Gastroenterology in 2017.
His clinical interests are inflammatory bowel diseases and he has served as Site Principal Investigator for multiple phase I-IV clinical trials in Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. He is active with the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, serving on the Austin Leadership Board and chairing the Austin Mission Committee.
In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of People's Community Clinic, a local Federally Qualified Health Center.
Thomas Ullman, MD
Dysplasia Surveillance in IBD: Is Blue for You?
Dr. Ullman is the Chief of Gastroenterology and Professor of Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He received his medical degree from Cornell University Medical College, and stayed to complete his residency in internal medicine at the New York Hospital followed by a GI fellowship at Yale University.
Dr. Ullman joined the faculty of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 1999, pursuing research questions pertaining to the relationship between IBD and colorectal cancer and has leading national efforts to improve quality of care in IBD. He served for 4 years as the Chief Medical Officer of Mount Sinai Doctors Faculty Practice and as the Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. After 19 years at Mount Sinai, Dr. Ullman recently transitioned to his current position at Montefiore/Einstein.
He is a Fellow of the ACG, an AGA Fellow, and a member of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation’s National Scientific Advisory Committee.
Sean Fine, MD
Management of Checkpoint Inhibitor Colitis
Dr. Fine is the Director of Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at Brown Physicians. His focus is on improving clinical outcomes and quality of care for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Dr. Fine's specific areas of interest include understanding and managing the hypercoagulable state in IBD, real world outcomes for patients with IBD and therapies, the role of diet and nutrition in IBD, and improving outcomes for patients with IBD in high performance sports activity.
Benjamin Cohen, MD
Peri-Operative Management of Biologics
Dr. Cohen is Co-Section Head and Clinical Director for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases in the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Cohen received his MD from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he also completed his internal medicine training. He completed his fellowship in Gastroenterology at the University of California San Diego. Dr. Cohen returned to Mount Sinai as the Present-Levison Inflammatory Bowel Disease Fellow from 2011-2012 where he then remained on faculty until joining the Cleveland Clinic in 2020. Throughout his career, Dr. Cohen has merged clinical care with participation in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) clinical research. His primary research interest has been centered on the safety of biologic medications in the peri-operative period for which he led a large multi-center clinical study. Dr. Cohen has also been a site primary investigator on Phase 3 IBD pharmaceutical clinical trials and collaborative investigator initiated studies.
In addition to his research interests, Dr. Cohen also has a strong commitment to IBD education. He is a member of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation Professional Education Committee and a co-founder and former chair of Rising Educators Academics and Clinicians Helping IBD (REACH-IBD). The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation recognized him for his leadership with the Rising Star award in 2018. Dr. Cohen has also been an active member of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) serving on both the Education and Training Committee and Clinical Guidelines Committee.
Joshua Novak, MD
Role of Nutrition in IBD
Dr. Novak is a Gastroenterologist specializing in Clinical Nutrition. He received his Bachelors in Science from Cornell University in 1999. He then attended the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biological Sciences and graduated in 2003. He completed his residency in internal medicine and Fellowship in Gastroenterology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, OH.
Dr. Novak then continued his training and completed a fellowship in Clinical Nutrition at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He has held Clinical faculty positions at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Mount Sinai Medical Center and the Emory Clinic where he currently has a dual appointment as an Assistant Professor with the Division of Gastroenterology and Department of Surgery.
In addition to general gastroenterology, he has additional specialized training in parenteral and enteral nutrition as well as multiple methods of advanced endoscopic enteral access. He has expertise in the management of malnutrition, short bowel syndrome, intestinal failure and the nutritional needs in both inflammatory bowel disease and functional gastrointestinal disorders.