Faten Aberra, MD MSCE
Faten Aberra is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She serves as the Co-Director for the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center Joint-CHOP-Penn Center for Digestive, Liver and Pancreatic Medicine. Dr. Aberra serves on the National Scientific Advisory Committee for the Crohn’s Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) and co-chair of the Patient Education Committee for the CCFA. Her clinical research interests are in inflammatory bowel disease and gastrointestinal infections. Her research in IBD involves understanding triggers for IBD disease activity, optimizing medical care of IBD patients and medical therapy clinical trials. Dr. Aberra has served at the primary investigator at Penn for several pharmaceutical industry therapy trials over the past decade, most recently UNITI and IMUNITI trials (Phase III clinical trials assessing ustekinumab for Crohn’s disease) and RBX2660 (microbiota suspension) for recurrent Clostridium difficile infection. Dr. Aberra has been elected to Best Doctors and has received the Castle Connolly Top Regional Doctor Award. She sees patients with inflammatory bowel disease at Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine.
Meenakshi Bewtra, MD MPH PhD
Meenakshi Bewtra is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and a Senior Scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Bewtra sees patients with inflammatory bowel disease at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. Dr. Bewtra has also been conducting clinical research for nearly 10 years in inflammatory bowel disease with a focus on natural history of inflammatory bowel disease, outcomes of disease and medication safety using observational data and statistical modeling, measures of risk and risk tolerance for therapies using discrete choice experiment, and clinical trials for educational interventions and novel therapies. Dr. Bewtra is also the PI of the IBD-Immunology Initiative (I3), a prospective clinical and tissue biobank actively enrolling all inflammatory bowel disease patients seen at the University of Pennsylvania. The I3 has collaborators within the University of Pennsylvania, nationally and internationally in both academia and industry and is participating in several studies examining the basic mechanisms of IBD and predictors of response to therapies with the goal of improving personalized medicine in inflammatory bowel disease. Dr. Bewtra’s work has been funded by the NIH, CCFA, AGA, PCORI, pharmaceutical industries, and private philanthropy. She is currently a member of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America, the American Gastroenterology Association and the American College of Gastroenterology.
Anna Buchner, MD PhD
Anna Buchner is an Assistant Profess of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She sees patients with inflammatory bowel disease at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine and Penn Medicine at Radnor. Dr. Buchner’s research focuses on the application of advanced imaging technologies, for the detection and treatment of early cancers and pre-cancerous lesions of the gastrointestinal tract including dysplastic colonic lesions in patients with long standing IBD. She specifically utilizes various imaging technologies such as virtual chromoendoscopy (NBI), traditional chromoendoscopy (with methylene blue or indigo carmine) and confocal microscopy (probe based confocal endomicroscopy pCLE) to detect and characterize such lesions, guide their endoscopic resection and post endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) follow up as well as to assess the disease activity. Currently, Dr. Buchner is conducting a prospective cohort study evaluating the utility of confocal endomicroscopy in diagnosing colorectal neoplasia in patients with longstanding IBD undergoing surveillance colonoscopy with chromoendoscopy.
Nabeel Khan, MD
Nadeel Khan is the Clinical Director of Gastroenterology at the Philadelphia VA Medical Center. Prior to this he was at the Director of IBD at Tulane University School of Medicine. He has developed a nationwide database of ulcerative colitis patients in the VA health care system and his research interests are focused on studying various aspects of the disease. Dr. Khan was awarded the "Young Investigator Award" at the last World Congress of Gastroenterology and he has published in various peer reviewed journal including American Journal of Gastroenterology and Gastroenterology.
James Lewis, MD MSCE
James Lewis is Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Senior Scholar in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Lewis serves as the Associate Director of the Penn Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center. He has been actively involved in clinical research related to inflammatory bowel diseases, medication safety, and optimizing medical therapies for more than 15 years. During the last 5 years, he has additionally focused on the impact of diet on the gut microbiome and the course of inflammatory bowel disease. He has employed a various research methods to address these questions, ranging from mathematical modeling to placebo controlled randomized trials. His work has been funded by the NIH, AHRQ, PCORI, and numerous foundations and corporate sponsors. Dr. Lewis previously served as the Chair of the National Scientific Advisory Committee for the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) and as associate editor for Gastroenterology and Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety. He is currently the lead scientist for the CCFA’s IBD Plexus.
Gary Lichtenstein, MD
Gary Lichtenstein is the Director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He sees patients with inflammatory bowel disease at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. Dr. Lichtenstein has received numerous awards, including the Scientific Achievement from the national Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America for his clinical work and research, the Louis A. Duhring Award for the top specialist in the University of Pennsylvania Health system, the Christina and Marie Lindback teaching award, and many others. He is annually listed in “The Best Doctors in America” in Philadelphia Magazine. An invited lecturer at the local, national, and international levels, Dr. Lichtenstein is the author or coauthor of more than 325 peer-reviewed primary articles and chapters, and he has presented over 250 abstracts and edited 18 books. He has lectured at a national and an international level at over 500 invited conferences, lectures, symposia, and institutional grand rounds. His current research interests encompass investigational therapies for the treatment of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease as well his research has had a significant focus on the safety of current and future medical therapy, including thiopurines, anti-TNF therapy, and anti-integrin therapy, both overall and also in the elderly and in pregnant patients. He has also focused his research on the natural history of disease as well as investigating factors predictive of unplanned hospital readmission. In particular he has evaluated factors predicting patient response to therapies with a special focus on biologic therapies. Dr. Lichtenstein has received numerous research grants focusing on these areas and has served as the national/international principal investigator evaluating novel agents for therapeutic trials in the treatment of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. He is leading a multitude of prospective clinical studies currently, including assessment of factors predicting response to anti-TNF therapy, safety of long-term mesalamine maintenance, factors predicting the disease course in patients with IBD, chromoendoscopy in IBD, and endoscopic endpoints in patients with IBD.
Farzana Rashid, MD
Dr. Rashid is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. She sees patients at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center and Penn Medicine at Radnor. Dr. Rashid's clinical practice includes patients with inflammatory bowel disease and she has a specific interest in helping adolescents and young adults transition to adult gastroenterology care. Dr. Rashid is a board member of the CCFA Philadelphia Chapter in addition to being on the Chapter Medical Advisory Committee. She has recently served on the CCFA National Patient Education Committee as well. Dr. Rashid is very involved in medical education for medical students, internal medicine residents, and gastroenterology fellows with a focus on teaching medical students through lectures, courses, and clinical rotations. She also teaches urogynecology fellows through lectures and clinical rotations and surgery residents and colorectal surgery fellows in their yearly core curriculum lecture on the Medical Management of IBD. She has been an investigator in various clinical trials at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.
Katherine Weyant, CRNP
Kate Weyant specializes in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD). She holds a Master’s degree as a Family Nurse Practitioner from Pennsylvania State University. Kate joined the Division of Gastroenterology at University of Pittsburgh where she worked with internationally recognized experts in IBD. She divided her time between clinical care and clinical/translational research, which led to publication, and national conference participation. She developed a particular interest in nutrition and coordinated inpatient nutritional services for patients with complex gastrointestinal failure. Kate sees patients with inflammatory bowel disease at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.
Gary Wu, MD
Gary Wu is the Ferdinand G. Weisbrod Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He serves as the Associate Chief for Research in the Division of Gastroenterology, Co-Director of the Penn-CHOP Microbiome Program, Associate Director of the Joint Penn-CHOP Center for Digestive, Liver and Pancreatic Medicine, and the Associate Director of the Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Disease in which he is the Director of its Molecular Biology Core. He is an elected member of both the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. Dr. Wu has held many leadership positions nationally including the Chair of the NIH NIDDK-C Study Section, Co-Senior Associate Editor for Gastroenterology, Chair of the Intestinal Disorders Sections and member of the AGA Council. He is currently Director and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for the American Gastroenterological Association Center for Gut Microbiome Research and Education. He is the past Grants Council Chair and current Chair of the Research Initiatives Committee for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. Research in the Wu lab is focused on the interaction between diet, the gut microbiome, and host metabolome. He has gained national recognition for his highly innovative and translational avenues of investigation that will help to guide the development of therapeutic strategies relevant to IBD and metabolic diseases. Dr. Wu will be Principal Investigator for 2 clinical trials in 2016: 1) "Food and Resulting Microbial Metabolites (FARMM)," a human intervention study designed to characterize the dietary-dependent contribution of the gut microbiome to the human plasma metabolome, which is funded by the CCFA; and 2) "Ileostomy Diet Study on the Gut Microbiome and its Metabolome," a human intervention study designed to characterize the gut microbiome and metabolome of patients with ileostomies, which is funded by the CCFA/Broad Medical Foundation.