Discovery Accelerated

Dr. Thomas A. Wynn is the Vice President of Discovery in the Inflammation and Immunology Research Unit. Prior to joining Pfizer in July 2017, he was the Chief of the Immunopathogenesis Section at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH in Bethesda, MD. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin.

He has published over 300 scholarly research papers, reviews, and book chapters in many prestigious journals including Nature, Science, Nature Medicine, and Immunity and has contributed substantially to our understanding of the role of cytokines and growth factors in the progression and resolution of inflammation and fibrosis. His research has also focused on the role of macrophages, fibroblasts and tissue progenitor/stem cells in tissue repair and regeneration. He serves as an advisory editor for the Journal of Experimental Medicine and as a consulting editor for the Journal of Clinical Investigation. For the past five years, Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics has included him among their list of “Highly Cited Researchers” in the field of Immunology.

Dr. Julian Panes is Director of the IBD Unit at Hospital Clínic in Barcelona, and assistant professor of Medicine of the University of Barcelona. His research group is focused on the development of new diagnostic tools particularly imaging modalities, the identification of new molecular targets for treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases, and the development of cell therapies.

He has published more than 300 manuscripts in international peer-reviewed journals, has served as a member of the Scientific Committee of the United European Gastroenterology Federation, the Scientific Committee of European Crohn’s and Colitis organization, has been member of the board of International Organization for the study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Associate Editor of Gut, and President of ECCO.

Dr. Rieder is Co-Director of the IBD section, Director of IBD research and Director of the Advanced IBD Fellowship program at the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition at the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland. His clinical focus is patients with IBD with a special emphasis on the field of pathogenesis, prediction and therapy of intestinal fibrosis. Dr. Rieder has published more than 120 articles and book chapters and has been recognized for his expertise as indicated through invitations to several workshop and clinical guideline steering committees of the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organization (ECCO).

He is lead author of the ECCO guidelines on Ulcerative colitis and lead author of the first ECCO clinical consensus on ‘Diagnosis and Management of Intestinal Fibrosis’. He received multiple international invitations as a speaker, session chair or conference faculty. Dr. Rieder serves as an abstract reviewer for all major GI conferences, he is past associate editor (Clinical and Translational Gastroenterology) and on several editorial boards of medical journals. He is proud of his significant ties to the ECCO, which he served as the chair of Y-ECCO, member of the ECCO operational board, prior Y-ECCO committee member and member of the scientific committee.

He is past chair of REACH-IBD and is a member of the Professional Education Committee of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. Dr. Rieder is the leading PI on the international Stenosis Therapy and Research (STAR) Consortium with the goal to build a pathway to test antifibrotic medications in stricturing Crohn’s disease and was recently awarded the Sherman Emerging Leaders award

Iris Dotan, MD is the director of the division of Gastroenterology at the Rabin Medical Center, Petah Tikva, Israel and is affiliated with the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv, Israel.

Professor Dotan received her medical degree from the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and her postdoctoral fellowship was at the Immunobiology Center, Mount Sinai Medical Center, in New York, NY, where she focused on intestinal epithelial cell biology. She is board certified in internal medicine and in gastroenterology and liver diseases. Professor Dotan’s clinical and research interests focus on biomarker-based stratification of patients with inflammatory bowel diseases and a personalized approach to their treatment and care, biologicals, and novel therapies for inflammatory bowel disease. She also has interests in the follow-up of patients with ulcerative colitis before and after restorative proctocolectomy (pouch surgery), in a comprehensive, multidisciplinary pouch clinic.

She conducts translational research in mucosal immunology, focusing on the interactions of intestinal epithelial cells and mucosal lymphocytes with their environment. She first described the anti-glycan antibodies and their relevance to Crohn's disease and investigates the role of glycans in intestinal immune responses. Professor Dotan has published more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals. She is the past president of the Israeli Association of Gastroenterology and Liver Diseases, a member of ECCO, the IOIBD Vice Chair, the Scientific Committee of UEG, and the Immunology and IBD Section of the AGA.