PROF. DR. CHAN WAH KHEONG

Dr Chan is Professor of Medicine, Director of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and Senior Consultant Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist at the University of Malaya, the University of Malaya Medical Centre and the University of Malaya Specialist Centre. He graduated with distinction from the University of Malaya in 2005 and obtained the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom in 2008. He served at the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital at the beginning of his career and subsequently returned to his alma mater in 2010 where he completed his fellowship in Gastroenterology and Hepatology and actively contributed to clinical, research and educational work.

He served as an Executive Committee Member for the Malaysian Society of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (MSGH) between 2015 and 2021. He was the Scientific Co-Chair and a core member of the Organizing Committee for the Asian Pacific Digestive Week (APDW) 2021. He is a member of the Academy of Medicine Malaysia, the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL), the European Association for the Study of the Liver, the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, and the Hepatology Committee of the World Gastroenterology Organization. He is a member of the Global NASH Council, the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of Liver MAFLD Consortium, the Gut and Obesity in Asia Workgroup, and the CAP Prognosis Study Group.

He completed two terms as Associate Editor for the Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology between 2018 and 2023, and is a current member of the Editorial Board for Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, and Clinical and Molecular Hepatology. He is a regular reviewer for multiple international journals. He has published numerous full papers in peer-reviewed journals and presented in both local and international conferences, including the Annual Scientific Meeting of the MSGH, the Singapore Hepatology Conference, the International Digestive Disease Forum, the Annual Meeting of the APASL, and the APDW.

His main area of research interest is metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease. As part of his PhD dissertation, he described the two-step approach in non-invasive assessment of liver fibrosis in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which has now become the foundation for a simple assessment and referral pathway for the disease in national and international guidelines. He served with distinction as a Clinical Research Fellow in Hepatology at the Storr Liver Centre. He contributed to the section on NAFLD in the 6th Edition of the Clinical Practice Guidelines on the Management of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus for Malaysia and was the lead author for the MSGH Consensus Statements on metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease (MAFLD). He is actively involved in NASH clinical trials and is in the Global Expert Panel for the ESSENCE study.

Besides being an expert in the diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal and liver diseases, he is passionate about diagnostic and therapeutic endoscopic procedures, including endoscopic ultrasonography and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography. He is involved in the training of fellows in Gastroenterology and Hepatology, and Advanced Therapeutic Endoscopy, and teaches undergraduate and postgraduate medical students. He contributed to two chapters in the core undergraduate reference book for clinical examination, Talley & O’Connor’s Clinical Examination 9th edition, Southeast Asia Edition. He is a member of the Department of Medicine Higher Education Committee and is a regular reviewer for postgraduate research and grant proposals.