Gastroenterologists in New York to consider

Dr. Scherl is the Jill Roberts Professor of Clinical Medicine at Weill Cornell and research director of the Jill Roberts Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease at NewYork-Presbyterian. She focuses on Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, including patients whose symptoms have not responded to first-line therapy and those facing decisions about biologic medications or surgery.

She contributed to the first randomized trial of ustekinumab in moderate-to-severe Crohn's disease, an antibody against IL-12/23 that is now a standard biologic option for patients who fail anti-TNF therapy ¹. Her group's work on the ileal microbiome in Crohn's disease identified invasive E. coli as enriched in inflamed tissue, pointing to bacterial drivers of inflammation ². A follow-up study tied IgA-coated E. coli in Crohn's patients to inflammation in the joints as well as the gut, a mechanism relevant to patients who develop Crohn's-associated spondyloarthritis ⁵. She also contributed to work showing how gut phage populations expand during colitis flares ³ and how specific immune cells in the gut lining produce IL-22 that protects against colitis ⁴.

Dr. Jacobson is Professor of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and directs the clinical research hepatology program at NYU Langone. He sees patients with chronic hepatitis B and C, cirrhosis, and other forms of liver disease, and he has spent decades helping design the trials that turned hepatitis C from a chronic illness into a curable one.

He was first and corresponding author on the QUEST-1 phase 3 trial of simeprevir plus peginterferon and ribavirin in treatment-naive hepatitis C patients, which showed that adding a direct-acting antiviral to the older interferon backbone produced higher cure rates ⁸. He contributed to the long-term tenofovir follow-up study in The Lancet that documented cirrhosis regression in many patients with chronic hepatitis B on five years of therapy ⁶, and he co-wrote the U.S. treatment algorithms for chronic hepatitis B that community gastroenterologists rely on to decide when to start antiviral medication ⁹¹⁰. His review of thrombocytopenia in chronic liver disease is a reference for clinicians weighing procedures in patients with low platelets ⁷.

Dr. Ullman chairs gastroenterology at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and directs the Westchester branch of the Susan and Leonard Feinstein IBD Clinical Center at Mount Sinai. He practices at Mount Sinai Hospital, Montefiore, and White Plains Hospital. His clinical focus is inflammatory bowel disease and, specifically, the cancer risk that comes with long-standing colitis.

He is first and corresponding author on a Gastroenterology review of intestinal inflammation and cancer, cited more than 1,100 times, that set the framework for how clinicians think about IBD-related colorectal cancer risk ¹¹. His cohort study found that patients with ulcerative colitis whose biopsies continued to show microscopic inflammation had higher rates of progression to colorectal cancer than patients whose mucosa healed on therapy, which is one reason gastroenterologists now aim for deep remission ¹². An earlier study showed that low-grade dysplasia in ulcerative colitis progressed to advanced neoplasia more often than previously thought, leading to tighter surveillance recommendations ¹³. He also contributed to a prospective trial showing that chromoendoscopy detects more dysplasia than standard biopsy during IBD surveillance colonoscopy ¹⁴.

Dr. Dieterich is an adjunct professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and practices at NYU Langone Hospitals. He is a hepatologist whose clinical and research focus has been viral hepatitis, liver complications of HIV, and drug-induced liver injury.

He was senior author on the APRICOT trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which showed that peginterferon alfa-2a plus ribavirin produced higher sustained virologic response than older regimens in patients with both HIV and hepatitis C, setting the standard for co-infection care at the time ¹⁶. He has contributed to long-term follow-up showing that a sustained virologic response after hepatitis C therapy is durable ¹⁷ and to a review of direct-acting antivirals that traced the shift to today's interferon-free cure regimens ¹⁹. His work on drug-induced liver injury associated with non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors guided safer HIV prescribing in patients with underlying hepatitis ¹⁸. An earlier case series described cytomegalovirus colitis in patients with AIDS, a condition that gastroenterologists still see in immunosuppressed patients today ²⁰.

Dr. Gross is Professor of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and clinical chief of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at NYU Langone Hospitals. His clinical focus is advanced endoscopy, including screening colonoscopy, Barrett's esophagus surveillance, and endoscopic ultrasound.

He was senior and corresponding author on a widely read overview of artificial intelligence in medicine published in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy ²¹ and led the CADeT-CS trial, a multicenter randomized study that showed deep learning polyp detection during colonoscopy reduced the adenoma miss rate compared with standard high-definition colonoscopy ²². Other work he contributed to includes a head-to-head trial of high-definition colonoscopy, Endocuff, EndoRings, and full-spectrum endoscopy for detecting adenomas ²⁴, a meta-analysis of Barrett's esophagus prevalence and risk factors ²³, and a prospective study on the safety of endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration ²⁵. For patients weighing their options for a screening colonoscopy or a surveillance program for Barrett's esophagus, this is relevant clinical experience.

Dr. Katzka is Professor of Medicine at Columbia and leads the Esophagology and Swallowing Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center. He sees patients with eosinophilic esophagitis, achalasia, gastroesophageal reflux, and other swallowing disorders.

He is senior author on a New England Journal of Medicine review that set the current framework for diagnosing and treating eosinophilic esophagitis in adults and children ²⁶, and on an earlier study showing that eosinophilic esophagitis is more common across age groups in the United States than previously recognized ²⁷. He also led a Gastroenterology update on achalasia that walked clinicians through the diagnostic steps and the trade-offs between pneumatic dilation, laparoscopic myotomy, and per-oral endoscopic myotomy ³⁰. He is senior author on the American Gastroenterological Association clinical practice update on diagnosing and monitoring celiac disease ²⁸ and contributed to work on videofluoroscopic studies of swallowing and pneumonia risk ²⁹.