Catherine Stedman

Catherine Ann Malcolm Stedman is a New Zealand pharmacologist and gastroenterologist, and is a clinical professor at the University of Otago, specialising in hepatitis C drug development. She is the first woman gastroenterologist to become a professor of medicine in New Zealand.

Academic career
Stedman completed her undergraduate medical degree at the University of Otago, and then undertook a PhD titled Role of nuclear receptors in bile acid disposition and detoxification at the University of Sydney in 2006. Her clinical training in pharmacology and gastroenterology took place at Christchurch Hospital and Westmead Hospital in Sydney. Stedman then worked in the Salk Institute, and on drug safety for a pharmaceutical company. Stedman returned to Christchurch Hospital as a consultant gastroenterologist and joined the faculty of the University of Otago, rising to clinical associate professor in 2015 and full professor in 2023. She is the first woman gastroenterologist to become a professor of medicine in New Zealand.

Stedman's research focuses on drug development for hepatitis C treatment, although she is also interested in autoimmune liver diseases, and how they affect the lives and life expectancy of people who have them. Stedman has been a principal investigator in a large number of clinical trials aimed at testing antiviral therapies, and led the first successful clinical trial in the world to show that oral antiviral treatment could cure hepatitis C. Stedman has also led trials for antiviral therapies aimed at patients with liver failure resulting from hepatitis C. As a result of these trials, and other potential therapies, the World Health Organization has proposed elimination of hepatitis C.

As of 2024, Stedman is the president of the New Zealand Society of Gastroenterology.

Honours and awards
In 2019 Stedman was awarded the Gold Research Medal by the University of Otago Christchurch campus.