Saskia van Mil (PhD) is Professor of Molecular and Translational Metabolism at the University Medical Center Utrecht, and Director of the Center for Molecular Medicine (www.cmmutrecht.eu). She is a member of the governing board and scientific committee of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (www.easl.eu).
She received her PhD from the University of Utrecht in 2004, on the topic of genetic disorders of pediatric cholestasis. As a post-doc at Imperial College London, United Kingdom, she studied the role of the bile salt sensor farnesoid X receptor (FXR) in intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy.
Since then, she has been intrigued by the versatility in molecular mechanisms of transcription by the nuclear receptor FXR and its therapeutic potential. Having received funding from the Netherlands’ Organisation of Scientific Research (Veni, Vidi, Vici), European Commission, Dutch Digestive Disease Foundation and DSM, her group studies the molecular and translational aspects of energy metabolism in the liver and the intestine. Amongst other projects, her group studies the molecular mechanisms of FXR function in metabolic disorders (e.g. NASH) and disorders of intestinal integrity (e.g. IBD). For more information on her research, please visit www.vanmil-lab.org.