The Asia Pacific Regional Group
As celiac disease continues to emerge globally, the Asia Pacific region is experiencing a growing number of patients. This Regional Group focuses on addressing the specific needs and challenges unique to the Asia Pacific population.
The Committee’s objectives are:
- Improve the knowledge, awareness and specialist expertise of celiac disease within the Asia Pacific region
- Encourage the expansion of clinical research centers and promote the involvement of the region in global pharmaceutical development programs
- Develop appropriate guidelines for standardising and optimising the care of patients with celiac disease
The Committee will also seek to facilitate Asian language communications with relevant groups.
Chair: Professor Govind Makharia
India
Professor Makharia is based in the Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. Through a systematic review and meta-analysis, which has been highly cited, Dr Makharia and his team explored the global burden of celiac disease and found it to be 0.7%. He and his team conceptualised a pilot multinational Asian study including Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, China and India, which has shown prevalence of celiac disease to be 2.4% in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. Through this study, it came to light that celiac disease is indeed emerging in Asia.
With the support of the ISSCD, Prof Makharia, along with his team organised the International Celiac Disease Symposium (ICDS) in India in 2017 which was a huge success. In spring 2024, Prof Makharia led and hosted the inaugural Asian Pacific Celiac Disease Symposium and he will constitute the Asia Pacific Society for the Study of Celiac Disease (APSSCD) within ISSCD. To aid improvement in patient care, he and his team have been working on developing a Celiac Care Mobile application. He has authored more than 359 papers (h-index 60) and is the recipient of research grants from various funding agencies worth more than USD 1,795,983.
Dr Robert Anderson
Australia
Dr Anderson is an Australia-based gastroenterologist, translational immunologist, and pharmaceutical and diagnostic developer. Dr Anderson has a global and multi-disciplinary perspective on celiac disease. He trained in medicine and completed a doctorate in New Zealand, and then completed specialist gastroenterology training in Melbourne, Australia.
His research in celiac disease began as a post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University focused on T cells and continued in Melbourne and then Boston USA designing and overseeing preclinical and clinical development of gluten-specific immunotherapy. He has led basic, preclinical and clinical research and pharmaceutical development programs focused on defining and modifying the adaptive immune response to gluten. He is a clinician-scientist who has worked closely with celiac disease patient support groups and industry. Currently, he is leading commercial development of T-cell diagnostics at Novoviah Pharmaceuticals, advises biopharmaceutical developers, and practices clinical gastroenterology at Mackay Base Hospital.
Dr Sasha Mealing
Australia
Dr Mealing has an interest in collaborative, multidisciplinary models of care and the development of practical tools to support clinicians, patients, and health systems. She contributes to education and training through teaching and mentoring medical students, junior doctors, and specialty trainees, and is involved in training committees, accreditation, and assessment activities. She is interested in strengthening regional collaboration across the Asia-Pacific to improve outcomes for children with coeliac disease.
Dr Prasenjit Das
India
Dr Prasenjit Das is a Gastrointestinal Pathologist working in All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. Dr Das has worked significantly in enteropathy disorders including celiac disease, with focus on pathology, pathogenesis, histological scoring, follow up biopsies, and in refractory celiac disease. Dr Das also is working on developing deep neural based algorithms for automated, assisted, and faster interpretation of enteropathy disorders and histological grading, and the same is currently undergoing validation. Apart from celiac disease, Dr Das is also working on other enteropathy disorders such as autoimmune enteropathy and its detection techniques. His laboratory is also working on ex-vivo organoid models in celiac disease. Dr Das led a team of expert gastroenterologists from Indian Society of Gastroenterologists and Indian Association of Pathologists and Microbiologists to formulate a working guideline for pathologists for sampling, handling of mucosal biopsies, interpretation and histological scoring for all pathologists in India with the aim to unify and standardize the interpretation and reporting across the country (DOI: 10.4103/IJPM.IJPM_1405_20).
Dr Das together with Dr Govind K Makharia played a significant role in organizing training workshops for pathologists in various part of India to enhance expertise in interpretation of enteropathy disorders. In the Asia Pacific Society for the Study of Celiac Disease (APSSCD) meeting hosted by Dr Makharia in New Delhi in 2024, a similar training workshop was organized for the young trainers. Dr Das has authored more than 270 articles with h-index of >50, have many research grants, and was the lead editor of the textbook ‘Surgical pathology of the Gastrointestinal Tract’, Springer, Singapore, 2022, ISBN: 978-981-16-6395-6. Dr Das is also serving as the Secretary General, Gastrointestinal and Hepatopancreatobiliary Association of India, Hon. Secretary, Indian Association of Pathologists & Microbiologists, and Councilor, Indian Division of International Academy of Pathology (IAP-ID).
Professor Ryota Hokari
Professor Hokari currently serves as the Head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the National Defense Medical College in Tokorozawa, Japan. With a distinguished career in gastroenterology, his research focuses on mucosal immunity, intestinal lymphoid cell trafficking, and the underlying mechanisms of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD).
Professor Hokari has made significant contributions to our understanding of celiac disease and gluten-related disorders within the Japanese population. His pivotal research includes:
Epidemiological Studies in Japan: He has led extensive screenings for celiac disease antibodies (tTG and DGP) in Japan, providing critical data on the extremely low prevalence of biopsy-confirmed celiac disease in the region.
Gluten Intolerance and IBD: His work has explored the high positivity of serum celiac markers in IBD patients, suggesting a complex relationship between gluten intolerance and intestinal inflammation even in the absence of classical celiac disease.
Mucosal Immunology: His expertise in gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) and immune cell migration has been instrumental in characterizing the unique clinical landscape of gluten-mediated diseases in Asia.