Program
2025 GMFH Summit
All times are in local time – Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4)
General Topic: Microbiome milleu: Diet, drugs, and environment
Saturday, March 15
8:00 – 8:15 am
Welcome and Day 1 Kickoff
Gail A. Hecht, MD, MS (Chicago, IL, USA) and Giovanni Barbara, MD (Bologna, Italy)
8:15 – 8:45 am
Opening Keynote Lecture
NutriOmics – the microbiome in a systems approach to obesity
Karine Clément, MD, PhD (Paris, France)
PLENARY SESSION 1:
Dietary Drivers of Health and Disease
Session Moderator: Colleen Kelly, MD (Boston, MA, USA)
8:45 am
Epidemiological considerations of the diet-microbiome intersection
Ashwin Ananthakrishnan, MBBS, MPH (Boston, MA, USA)
9:15 am
Food taxonomy and the integration of dietary and microbiome data/strong>
Abigail Johnson, PhD, RD (Minneapolis, MN, USA)
9:45 am
Food additives interact with the microbiome in health and disease
Benoit Chassaing, PhD (Paris, France)
10:15 – 10:45 am
Morning Break
PLENARY SESSION 2:
Extra-intestinal Implications of the Gut Microbiome
Session Moderator: Emeran Mayer, MD (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
10:45 am
Metabolic syndrome, MASLD and auto-brewery syndrome
Bernd Schnabl, MD (San Diego, CA, USA)
11:15 am
Cardiovascular disease and the gut microbiota
Chenhao Li, PhD (Cambridge, MA, USA)
11:45 am
The gut-brain axis and implications of the microbiome in neurodegenerative diseases
Andrea Merchak, PhD (Gainsville, FL, USA)
12:15 pm
Networking Lunch
1:15 pm
Abstract Presenter Lightning Talks
WORKSHOPS SESSIONS
2 – 3:15 pm
Workshops 1 and 2 (two concurrent sessions)
Workshop 1: Nutrition for health: Tailoring recommendations based on disease and health status
Moderator: Dirk Haller, PhD (Munich, Germany)
Speakers:
Hannah Holscher, PhD (Champaign, IL, USA)
Lawrence David, PhD (Durham, NC, USA)
Workshop 2: Non-traditional model systems in microbiome investigations
Moderator: Purna Kashyap, MBBS invited (Chicago, IL, USA)
Speakers:
Katherine Amato, PhD (Chicago, IL, USA)
Barbara Rehermann, MD (Bethesda, MD, USA)
3:15 – 3:45 pm
Afternoon Break
3:45 – 5 pm
Workshops 3 and 4
Workshop 3: More fiber or less? Alternative stable states
Moderator: Balfour Sartor, MD invited (Chapel Hill, NC, USA)
Speakers:
Andrew Gewirtz, PhD (Atlanta, GA, USA)
Bjoern Schroeder, PhD ( Umeå, Sweden)
Workshop 4: Probiotic supplementation and the infant microbiota
Moderator: Brent Polk, MD invited
Speakers:
Geoffrey Preidis, MD, PhD (Waco, TX, USA)
Michelle Asbury, PhD (Calgary, Canada)
5 – 7 pm
Networking Reception
Sunday, March 16
PLENARY SESSION 3:
The Extra-Bacterial Gut Ecosystem
Session Moderator: Gary Wu, MD (Philadelphia, PA, USA)
8:30- 9 am
The Human Virome Program
Emmanuel Mongodin, PhD (Bethesda, MD, USA)
9 – 9:30 am
Multi-drug resistance and phage-bacterial interaction in the gut
Robert (Chip) Schooley, MD (San Diego, CA, USA)
9:30 – 10 am
Fungi shape the gut microbiome and host immune system during development
Kyla Ost, PhD (Boulder, CO, USA)
PLENARY SESSION 4:
The Gut Microbiome and Oncology
Session Moderator: Harry Sokol, MD, PhD (Paris, France)
10:30 am
The gut microbiome and cancer
Cynthia Sears, MD (Baltimore, MD, USA)
11 am
Diet as a precision cancer intervention
Carrie R Daniel MacDougall, PhD, MPH (Houston, TX, USA)
11:30 am
Oncological therapeutics and immunotherapy
Jonathan (Tsoni) Peled, MD, PhD (New York, NY, USA)
12 pm
Closing Keynote Lecture
A biophysical view of the microbiome
KC Huang, PhD (Stanford, CA, USA)
12:30 pm
Closing Remarks
Harry Sokol, MD, PhD (Paris, France) & Gail Hecht, MD, MS (Chicago, USA)
12:35 pm
End of Program
