Director, Gastroenterology

Section Head, Hepatology

Professor Alex Thompson is a Director of the Department of Gastroenterology at St Vincent’s Hospital and the University of Melbourne, Australia, MRFF Practitioner Fellow and Adjunct Assistant Professor of the Department of Gastroenterology, Duke University Medical Center. He holds honorary appointments at the Burnet Institute and the Doherty Institute (Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory). Professor Thompson is the lead hepatologist for the Statewide Prison Hepatitis Service in Victoria, Australia. He is a current board member of the Gastroenterology Society of Australia, and former executive council member of the Asia Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver.

His research focusses on improving outcomes for people living with viral hepatitis C, hepatitis B and other liver diseases. He is an active clinical investigator for trials evaluating the efficacy of cure treatment strategies for hepatitis C and hepatitis B, as well as the development and evaluation of new models of care for people with hepatitis C. This work focusses on prisoners and people who inject drugs, using treatment as prevention to eliminate transmission and reduce the prevalence of hepatitis C in Australia. He was involved in the discovery of IL28B polymorphism as a predictor of treatment outcome in hepatitis C.

Professor Thompson has published widely in journals including the Medical Journal of Australia, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Gut and Journal of Hepatology. 

Recent Articles

First-in-human randomized study of RNAi therapeutic RG6346 for chronic hepatitis B virus infection. Gane EJ, Kim W, Lim TH, Tangkijvanich P, Yoon JH, Sievert W, Sukeepaisarnjaroen W, Thompson AJ, Pavlovic V, Surujbally B, Wat C, Brown BD, Achneck HE, Yuen MF. J Hepatol. 2023 Jul 29:S0168-8278(23)05005-5.

Baseline serum HBV RNA is associated with the risk of hepatitis flare after stopping nucleoside analog therapy in HBeAg-negative participants. Thompson AJ, Jackson K, Bonanzinga S, Hall SAL, Hume S, Burns GS, Sundararajan V, Ratnam D, Levy MT, Lubel J, Nicoll AJ, Strasser SI, Sievert W, Desmond PV, Ngu MC, Sinclair M, Meredith C, Matthews G, Revill PA, Littlejohn M, Bowden DS, Canchola JA, Torres J, Siew P, Lau J, La Brot B, Kuchta A, Visvanathan K. Hepatol Commun. 2023 Jul 17;7(8):e0188.

Eliminating hepatitis C in Australia: a novel model of hepatitis C testing and treatment for people who inject drugs at a medically supervised injecting facility. MacIsaac MB, Whitton B, Hubble A, Cogger S, Penn M, Weeks A, Elmore K, Pemberton D, Anderson J, Howard R, McKeever U, Papaluca T, Hellard ME, Stoove M, Wilson D, Pedrana A, Doyle J, Clark N, Holmes J, Thompson AJ. Med J Aust. 2023 Apr 3;218(6):256-261.