Plenary speakers (Pl)
Every year we invite a number of plenary speakers who are experts in their respective fields, and this year is no exception. Twenty-five world experts in MND research and clinical care will provide an overview of a variety of topics across the ALS/MND research and clinical management spectrum. You can read abstracts of these platform presentations online. All platform presentations have a code beginning with ‘C’ followed by a number (e.g. C10). This will help you locate the specific abstract mentioned throughout the periodic table topics.
This year’s plenary speakers are:
Dr Rudolph E Tanzi, Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA: The Stephen Hawking Memorial Lecture – Targeting neuroinflammation across neurodegenerative diseases (C1)
Prof Adriano Aguzzi, Institute of Neuropathology, University of Zurich, Switzerland: Prions, prionoids and neurodegeneration (C2)
Associate Prof Daryl A Bosco, University of Massachusetts Medical School, USA: Protein dysregulation in ALS (C3)
Prof Serena Carra, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy: Protein quality control of biomolecular condensates: Implications for amyotrphic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia (C4)
Dr Merit Cudkowicz, Sean M Healey & AMG Center for ALS at Mass General Hospital, USA: The REFALS phase 3 study of levosimendan in patients with ALS (C5)
Dr Ralph Kern, President and Chief Medical Officer, BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics: NurOwn ALS Phase 3 clinical trial update (co-presenter) (C6)
Dr Sabrina Paganoni, Healey Center for ALS at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, USA: Functional and long-term survival benefit of AMX0035 in ALS: Results of the CENTAUR and Open Label Extension trials (C7)
Prof Orla Hardiman, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland: The power of ALS patient registries in the age of personalised medicine (C8)
Prof Carolyn Young, The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust, Liverpool, UK: Improving patient reported outcome measures in ALS/MND (C9)
Dr Fernando Vieira, ALS Therapy Development Institute, USA: Assessment of ALS disease progression from accelerometer and voice recordings using machine learning with application to the evaluation of real-world drug efficacy (C10)
Dr Hemali Phatnani, New York Genome Center (NYGC), USA: Spatiotemporal dynamics of molecular pathology in ALS (C11)
Prof Ekaterina Rogaeva, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada: DNA methylation studies in ALS and age acceleration (C12)
Dr Christine Vande Velde, Université de Montréal and Université de Montréal Hopsital Research Center (CRCHUM): Defective RNA metabolism in ALS: TDP-43 loss of function and stress granule dynamics (C13)
Prof Adriano Chiò, Department of Neuroscience, University of Turin, Italy: ASOs for neuromuscular diseases: Yesterday, today and tomorrow (C14)
Prof Aaron D Gitler, Stanford University, USA: Modulating disease modifying genes in ALS (C15)
Dr Agessandro Abrahoo (co-presenter), University of Toronto and Dr Lorne Zinman (co-presenter), University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Research Institute, Canada: MR-guided focused ultrasound: A new frontier in the delivery of biotherapeutics for ALS (co-presenter) (C16)
Dr Angela Genge, Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, Quebec, Canada; Dr Rachel Burman, King’s MND Care and Research Centre, London, UK; Dr Caterina Bendotti, Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research (IRFMN) and Bruce A J Virgo – Bruce is living with MND: Lessons from COVID-19 (C17)
Dr Michael J Strong, Western University, Canada: Are we there yet? Measuring nonmotor progression in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (C18)
Dr William W Seeley, University of California, San Francisco, USA: Selective vulnerability in frontotemporal dementia and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (C19)
Prof Jeremy D Schmahmann, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, USA: The role of the cerebellum in cognition: Implications for ALS (C20)
Aled Edwards, CEO, Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), Toronto, Canada: Open drug discovery: From genes to affordable medicines (C21)
Prof Matthew Kiernan, University of Sydney, Australia: ALS Diagnostic Criteria: The Gold Standard (C22)