MS: Welcome to the future

Eva Kubala Havrdová is Professor of Neurology at the First Faculty of Medicine, General University Hospital, and Director of the Center for Demyelinating Diseases at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She obtained her medical degree at the same university in 1981 and went on to specialize in neurology and became a professor there in 2010.

Professor Kubala Havrdová’s research interests include the roles of cytokines, immunoglobulins and T cells in multiple sclerosis (MS) and the treatment of malignant MS. She created the concept of ‘freedom from disease activity’ now used to compare the efficacy of MS drugs. Professor Kubala Havrdová introduced disease-modifying MS treatments to the Czech Republic and established a network of MS centre covering the whole country. She also developed standards for the diagnosis and treatment of MS and neuromyelitis optica in the Czech Republic.

Professor Kubala Havrdová organized the 23rd European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS) Congress in Prague in 2007. She is a member of the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF) International Medical and Scientific Board and the Committee of the Czech Neurological Society. She has authored more than 100 articles on MS in neurology, neuroimmunology and MS journals, and has also written a handbook on MS for general practitioners, a book on MS pharmacotherapy, and several books for patients.

Patricia K Coyle, MD, FAAN, FANA, is Vice Chair and Professor of Neurology, as well as the Director of the Stony Brook Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Comprehensive Care Center. She earned her medical degree and completed her residency in neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, where she also completed a fellowship in neuroimmunology and neurovirology. Her areas of expertise include MS, neuroimmunology and neurologic infectious disease (in particular, Lyme disease).

Professor Coyle has held multiple leadership positions at the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, the American Academy of Neurology, the American Neurological Association and the National MS Society. She has served as an adviser to the US Food and Drug Administration and the Institute of Medicine. Professor Coyle has received research funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National MS Society, and is actively engaged in studies to understand and treat these diseases.

Tomas Olsson received his MD in 1977 and completed his PhD in medical sciences in 1980. He obtained his specialist qualification in clinical neurology in 1984. He was appointed as Professor of Molecular Medicine in 1995, and has held the post of Professor in Neurology at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, since 2008.

Professor Olsson is a member of the Nobel Assembly, and has been its Chairman since 2017. He was the Chairman of the Swedish Expert Committee for Multiple Sclerosis from 1997 to 2002, and is co-founder and a member of the Swedish Multiple Sclerosis Society. Professor Olsson is a board member and co-founder of the European School of Neuroimmunology (ESNI), a member of the International Scientific Board of the International Society of Neuroimmunology International Congress of Neuroimmunology (ISNI), a former Executive Board member of the International Scientific Board of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS) and a member of the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium (IMSGC).

Professor Olssons’ research interests include neuroinflammation with a focus on multiple sclerosis (MS) and its relation to genetics, immunology and lifestyle/environmental factors. Importantly, he was among the first to demonstrate autoreactive T cells in MS. He has been key to the collection of very large MS case-control materials, needed for the definition of MS risk genes and their interaction with lifestyle factors such as smoking and obesity. He has (co)authored around 600 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, many of them high-impact journals. He won the Eric K Fernströms Prize for medical research in 1994, the K/F Johansens International Award, Copenhagen, in 2012 and Swedbank’s Science Prize in 2014.

Jiwon Oh is Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Neurology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Dr Oh is a staff neurologist at St. Michael’s Hospital and specializes in the care of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Concurrently, she holds appointments as a scientist at the Keenan Research Centre of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, Toronto, and as a part-time Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.

Dr Oh’s research focuses on developing advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques in the spinal cord and brain for use in clinical settings. She leads the MRI research programme at St. Michael’s Hospital and is the Principal Investigator for several local and collaborative multicentre MRI studies.

Dr Oh is the Secretary and one of the Executive Committee members of the North American Imaging in MS (NAIMS) cooperative – a multinational collaborative MRI research endeavour in MS. Over the last 6 years, NAIMS has grown from seven to 30 independent sites and has multiple active multicentre research projects with many more at various stages of development and implementation. Finally, she is leading the Canadian National Progression Cohort, a prospective cohort study that is being designed to better understand progression in MS.