MICHAEL-PREIS

[Laudatio nur in englischer Sprache]

Piero Perucca is Associate Professor of Adult Epilepsy at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and Director of the Bladin-Berkovic Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at Austin Health, Melbourne. Dr. Perucca obtained his medical and neurology training at the University of Paiva, Italy, and completed his training on clinical and research aspects of epilepsy at Columbia University, New York, and at the Montreal Neurological Institute. He then obtained a PhD from the University of Melbourne. He has made major contributions in diverse areas, including clinical neurophysiology, clinical epileptology, genetics and pharmacology. He is actively involved in several commissions and task forces of the ILAE, including being chair of the Genetics Commission. He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications, many with the very active Melbourne epilepsy community.

Dr. Perucca’s research in pharmacology has concentrated on side effects of anti-seizure medication (ASM). He submitted three important publications in this area. In one he studies the adverse effects of ASMs and classifies them in five biologically plausible factors, showing that “when specific classes of adverse effects are identified and attempts are made to reduce them, quality of life is significantly improved.” In a second publication, combining his expertise in pharmacology and genetics, he demonstrated that prenatal exposure to ASMs does not increase the burden of de novo mutations, thus eliminating this mechanism as a cause of ASM-induced birth defects and providing important counseling information. In the third publication, he evaluated the influence of sex on the effect of valproic acid and other ASMs on post-natal developmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder. He found that VPA did not result in the usual predominant presence in males of neurobehavioral effects, thus indicating that VPA may have a stronger effect on females. He also studied the adverse effects of ASMs in new-onset seizures and on mood. He published a review of ASM adverse effects in Lancet Neurology.

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Daichi Sone is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry, Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo, and is also belonging to UCL Institute of Neurology. He is a clinical epileptologist and psychiatrist, and started his research career with an application of advanced neuroimaging techniques in focal and generalized epilepsy, expanding further to the field of psychiatry in epilepsy, especially for the pathomechanism and neuroimaging biomarkers of psychiatric comorbidities as well as cognitive dysfunction. He has many research publications and is also actively participating in the local activities of young epilepsy section of the ILAE.

He submitted recent papers focused on the abnormal brain aging process in psychosis of epilepsy, altered mu-opioid systems in affective symptoms in temporal lobe epilepsy, and the relationship between memory dysfunction and surgical extent in temporal lobe epilepsy. In addition to these studies, he has investigated neural network dysfunction and glucose metabolism in psychosis of epilepsy or psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. His active research involvement in the field of psychiatry in epilepsy may contribute to the future pathomechanistic clarification of this still underexplored field and help improve care of persons with epilepsy associated with psychiatric and/or cognitive comorbidities.

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Gabriele Lignani is Associate Professor at UCL, Institute of Neurology in London, UK. Gabriele Lignani is an excellent researcher, who since his PhD and first postdoc in Italy, made substantial contributions to the field of experimental epilepsy research. Specifically he reported the first evidence that master gene regulators of homeostatic compensation mechanisms are important in controlling network excitability. As a young independent researcher he further contributed to the understanding of mechanisms underlying epilepsy.

Gabriele Lignani’s major contribution to experimental epilepsy has been in developing innovative genetic therapies. He submitted three excellent and highly relevant publications in high impact journals. In particular he demonstrates the first gene therapy approach based on CRISPR to treat a model of Dravet Syndrome, as well as a model of acquired pharmaco-resistant epilepsy, opening a new avenue in gene editing for epilepsy. Moreover, in the recently published paper in Science, he developed the first activity-dependent gene therapy for brain circuit disorders. He devised the activity-depended gene therapy as a form of artificial homeostatic plasticity and collaborates with several groups locally and worldwide to bring this novel approach to the clinic, accelerating the final goal of finding innovative cures for epilepsy.