Draft:Christopher C. Thompson

Thompson earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. He completed residency training in internal medicine and fellowship training in gastroenterology at Penn State Medical Center, followed by advanced endoscopy training in the Harvard Medical School's combined Advanced Endoscopy Fellowship Program.^[2]

Thompson joined the faculty of Harvard Medical School in 2003.^[8] At Brigham and Women's Hospital, he serves as Director of Endoscopy and Therapeutic Endoscopy and directs the Advanced Endoscopy Fellowship.^[1] He is also Co-Director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness, a multidisciplinary program for obesity and metabolic disease.^[9]

The interventional endoscopy program at Brigham and Women's Hospital is the only center in the United States to be designated as a World Endoscopy Organization Center of Excellence.^[10]

Thompson is the principal investigator of the Developmental Endoscopy Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a translational research program focused on endoscopic technology development.^[2] Work originating from this laboratory has supported multiple clinical trials and company spinouts.^[2]

Early in his career, Thompson was involved in work related to natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery and was a founding member of the Natural Orifice Surgery Consortium for Assessment and Research (NOSCAR), a joint initiative of the ASGE and the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons formed to guide the development of these techniques.^[2][11]

Beginning in the mid-2000s, Thompson conducted early clinical investigations of incisionless endoscopic gastric remodeling for obesity, first reported in humans in the TRIM trial in 2010.^[12] These studies were published in peer-reviewed journals and described in contemporaneous medical and lay press coverage.^[13]

Building on this foundation, Thompson and Rob Hawes performed the first-in-human cases of endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG) in 2012 using a full-thickness endoscopic suturing system.^[6][14] The procedure was subsequently refined and adopted at multiple centers internationally.^{[14][6][15][7]} A prospective, multicenter, randomized trial published in The Lancet in 2022 found that ESG with lifestyle modifications resulted in significantly greater weight loss than lifestyle modifications alone.^[16] In July 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted De Novo authorization for the endoscopic suturing device used in ESG.^[17]

In addition to bariatric endoscopy, Thompson has authored and led studies evaluating endoluminal operating platforms and robotic systems for advanced endoscopic procedures, including comparative evaluations of robotic versus conventional techniques.^[3]

Thompson has published translational work on endoscopically directed gene therapy and molecular delivery to the gastrointestinal tract, and has served as an advisor to Fractyl Health's pancreatic gene therapy program.^[4][18] He has also contributed to research in plasma medicine applied to endoscopic and gastrointestinal applications, including as the principal investigator of a clinical trial investigating argon plasma therapy for Helicobacter pylori eradication during endoscopy.^[19][5]

Thompson received the Mel Schapiro VideoGIE Award at Digestive Disease Week (2022),^[20][21] the Clinical Innovation Award from the Brigham and Women's Physicians Organization (2007),^[22] and delivered the J. Edward Berk, MD, DSc, FASGE Endowed Lecture at Digestive Disease Week (2025).^[23]