Letter from the Editor

Dear colleagues,

A meeting in person again – this was the first news from this year’s AAN meeting that took place in Seattle. The meeting in hybrid format attracted some 8000 neurologists participating in situ and many who followed the attractive program online. All colleagues in Seattle enjoyed meeting old and making new friends during a week of densely packed educative and scientific sessions that covered beyond science all aspects of neurology practised in private office, hospital, or academic settings.

This review aims at providing summaries of the essentials of varied topics covered in the scientific sessions.

Alzheimer disease, the controversy around the monoclonal antibody aducanumab and many new therapeutic strategies, and COVID-19 were covered each day. The encouraging progress in some of the most devastating inherited diseases capitalising on technological platforms to rectify genetical aberrations of neuromuscular and CNS disorders ranging from spinal muscular atrophies to Huntington and Parkinson disease (oligonucleotide antisense and viral vector approaches) was presented. So were studies on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and its neurological consequences, from clinical descriptions, outcomes, the long haul COVID-19 manifestations, and pathology, to concepts of its pathogenesis and new therapies.

I sincerely hope you will get an idea of the breadth of scientific and management progress in the many diseases affecting the nervous system reviewed here.

Please enjoy the reading.

Hans-Peter Hartung

 

Biography

Prof. Hartung is currently Professor of Neurology at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Honorary Professor at Brain and Mind Center, University of Sydney, Visiting Professor at Medical University Vienna and Palacky University Olomouc. He was chairman of the Department of Neurology, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf from 2001-2020, director of the Center for Neurology and Neuropsychiatry from 2012-2020 and director of the Department of Conservative Medicine from 2012-2019.

Prof. Hartung’s clinical and translational research interests are in the field of basic and clinical neuroimmunology and in particular multiple sclerosis and immune neuropathies, development of new immunological, neuroprotective and neural repair promoting strategies. He has (co-)authored more than 950 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 100 book chapters. He has been involved as member of the Steering Committee in numerous international multicentre therapeutic phase 2 and 3 trials in multiple sclerosis, Guillain-Barré Syndrome and CIDP.

He was President of ECTRIMS and has served/ serves amongst others on the executive boards of the European Charcot Foundation, the European Neurological Society, and the International Multiple Sclerosis Cognition Society (IMSCOGS). He is/was also member of the Editorial Board of a number of international journals. Prof. Hartung is a Fellow of the AAN and EAN, and has been chair/ member of the management group of the EAN scientific panels on general neurology and multiple sclerosis. He is Corresponding and Honorary Fellow of several international societies.

 

Conflict of Interest Statement:

Hans-Peter Hartung has received fees for consulting, speaking, and serving on steering committees from Bayer Healthcare, Biogen, GeNeuro, MedImmune, Merck, Novartis, Opexa, Receptos Celgene, Roche, Sanofi Genzyme, CSL Behring, Octapharma, Teva, TG Therapeutics, and Viela Bio, with approval by the Rector of Heinrich-Heine University.



Posted on 2 June 20222 June 2022