TRAIGE trial

Jingyi Liu

Jingyi Liu is a phD candidate in the field of Neurology at Beijing Tiantan Hospital. She has participated in several national stroke clinical trials, including TRAIGE, CNSR-3, and CHANCE-2, and also in the ongoing international clinical trial CHARM.

ANNEXA4 Study

 Truman J. Milling

Truman J. Milling Jr., MD is an experienced clinical trialist and practicing emergency physician at a busy safety-net hospital that is a Level 1 Trauma Center and Comprehensive Stroke Center. He serves on the leadership committees of several current global clinical trials, ANNEXA-I, ENRICH AF, Lex 209, and is the principal Investigator of the Restart Trials. He has over 60 peer-reviewed publications, including several in New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and Circulation.

Saskia Middeldorp

Saskia Middeldorp is Professor of Medicine and Head of the Department of Internal Medicine of the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Prior to her transfer to Nijmegen she has been a professor of Medicine at Amsterdam University Medical Centers for over 10 years, leading the clinical thrombosis and haemostasis research lines of the Department of Vascular Medicine.

Her present research focuses on several aspects of hereditary and acquired thrombophilia, women’s issues in thrombosis and haemostasis, and the clinical evaluation of new anticoagulants. She is principal investigator of practice-changing trials such as the investigator-initiated ALIFE, ALIFE2 and Highlow randomized controlled trials. Saskia Middeldorp is elected council member of the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, immediate past chair of the INVENT-VTE network, Associate Editor of the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis and Editorial Board Member of Blood. In December 2016, she held the Ham-Wasserman Lecture and received the accompanying award in recognition of pioneering work in inherited thrombophilia at the annual American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting in San Diego. She is member of the Venous Thrombosis Guideline Coordination Panel and chair of the Thrombophilia Chapter of ASH. Saskia Middeldorp has co-authored the Pregnancy chapter of the ASH pregnancy guideline in 2018 as well as the 9th Edition Antithrombotic Guidelines of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) in 2012. Saskia currently supervises 10 PhD students and has co-authored over 320 peer-reviewed papers and several book chapters, and reviews manuscripts for international scientific journals.

DECOMPRESS2 Study-Final Results

José M. Ferro

José M. Ferro was born in Lisbon, Portugal, on the 22nd October 1951. He graduated in 1975 and received his PhD in Medicine in 1987 from the the University of Lisbon. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences, London, Canada. He is currently Full Professor of Neurology at the Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, and Director of the Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health and of the Neurology Service at the Hospital de Santa Maria, Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Norte, EPE. He is Principal Investigator at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular João Lobo Antunes, University of Lisbon. He was President of the European Neurological Society, Chairman of the Stroke Portuguese Society and member of the Scientific Panel for Health of the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Directorate E – Health of the European Commission. Has authored or co-authored 360 papers published in peer-reviewed journals and 60 book chapters. His research interest focuses on cerebrovascular disease, in particular cerebral venous thrombosis, cryptogenic stroke, stroke in systemic diseases and neuropsychiatric consequences of stroke.

MR ASAP trial

Bart van der Worp

Bart van der Worp is a neurologist with a special interest in cerebrovascular diseases at the University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He has been (co-)Chief Investigator of the randomised stroke trials HAMLET, PAIS, COOLIST, and VAST and is (co-)Chief Investigator of PRECIOUS, APACHE-AF, and MR ASAP. He is a member of the Dutch CONTRAST consortium which aims to identify and test new treatments for patients with acute ischaemic stroke or intracerebral haemorrhage. He is Past President of ESO.

Simone Uniken Venema

Simone Uniken Venema is a PhD candidate in the department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the University Medical Center Utrecht. She coordinates the MR ASAP trial as part of her PhD research. She received her medical training at the University Medical Center Utrecht.

The Flying Intervention Team for Endovascular Treatment Study

Gordian Hubert

Gordian Hubert was born in Munich, Germany and is a neurologist with a special interest in stroke systems of care and telemedicine. He studied medicine in Germany and Switzerland and received his neurology training in Munich and Dunedin (New Zealand). He is head of the “Telemedical Stroke Network TEMPiS” in Germany. His aim is to improve access to specialized stroke care for people living in rural areas by supporting local hospitals with telemedicine, knowledge transfer, and transfer of hands on services. He is principle investigator of the “Flying Intervention Team” study. A comparison of flying an intervention team to patients in rural hospitals to perform endovascular treatment, versus transferring the patients to a comprehensive stroke center. He was PI of the “Televertigo” and “TeleHINTS I” study, which developed telemedical diagnostic care for patients with acute dizziness in rural areas. Gordian Hubert was chairing the “Telestroke Committee” of the European Stroke Organization from 2016-2020 and is currently co-chairing the German Committee for telemedical stroke care of the German Stroke Society.

Nikolai Hubert

Nikolai Hubert is a research fellow at the Department of Neurology and Neurointensive Care at Munich Clinic Harlaching and the Telemedical Stroke Network in Southeast Bavaria (TEMPiS) in Germany. He studied Biology in Berlin, Germany and Zurich, Switzerland. His research is focused on telemedicine, stroke in rural areas and novel systems of care. He is currently working on the evaluation of the Flying Intervention Team, which was setup within the TEMPiS network in 2018.

MR CLEAN-MED Trial

Wouter van der Steen

Wouter van der Steen, MD, is coordinating investigator of the “Multicenter randomized clinical trial of endovascular treatment for acute ischemic stroke. The effect of periprocedural medication: acetylsalicylic acid, unfractionated heparin, both or neither (MR CLEAN-MED).” He is a clinical researcher affiliated to the Departments of Neurology and Radiology & Nuclear Medicine of Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The main topic of his research is endovascular therapy for acute ischemic stroke. He combines his research with clinical work as a resident in neurology.

SWIFT DIRECT trial

Urs Fischer

Prof. Urs Fischer is the Chairman of the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland. Urs Fischer studied in Bern, London, San Francisco and Lomé and graduated in 2000. In 2008/2009, he performed a “Master of Science by Research in Clinical Neurology” at the University of Oxford. In 2015 he was elected as “Professor for Acute Neurology and Stroke” at the University of Bern. Since August 2021, he is chairing the Department of Neurology in Basel. Urs Fischer is a clinical researcher and his main research interest involves diagnosis, management, treatment and outcome of patients with acute neurological diseases, especially of patients with acute ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke. He is principal investigator of several international multicenter academic trials on the management of patients with ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke. The SWIFT DIRECT trial (www.swift-direct.ch) investigates whether adding intravenous thrombolysis to mechanical thrombectomy improves the patient outcome compared to direct mechanical thrombectomy alone. The ELAN trial (www.elan-trial.ch) assesses when oral anticoagulation with direct oral anticoagulants in stroke patients with atrial fibrillation can be introduced. The SWITCH trial (www.switch-trial.ch) investigates whether decompressive craniectomy in addition to the best medical treatment is superior to best medical treatment alone for patients with intracerebral haemorrhage. Urs Fischer is active in National and European Stroke Societies: he is the former Secretary General of the European Stroke Organisation (ESO), treasurer of the Swiss Neurological Society (SNG), member of the programme committee of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN), and he is co-founder the ESO ESMINT ESNR Stroke Winter School. Together with his colleagues of the stroke center Bern he is currently establishing the European Stroke Master Program, which will start to enroll students in 2022.

Jan Gralla

Jan Gralla is a qualified diagnostic and interventional neuroradiologist who received training in Erlangen/Germany, Oxford/UK and Bern/Switzerland. He is the Chair and Director of the Department of Neuroradiology at the Inselspital, University of Berne, Switzerland. Focus of research is the diagnosis and endovascular treatment of neurovascular disease, esp. acute ischemic stroke. A scientific milestone has been the development and description of a dedicated animal model to investigate mechanical thrombectomy approaches. This model became the standard educational setup for interventional training and a requirement in the process approval for devices. In clinical research, milestones are the initiation and condition of large international studies and randomized controlled trials. Jan Gralla has been the global Co-PI of the STAR study (NCT01327989), the first large-scale study on stent-retriever thrombectomy. As the global Co-PI he is currently responsible for the SWIFT Direct Trial (NCT03192332), investigating the role of intravenous thrombolysis in large vessel stroke.

The role of the HTRA1 protease in white matter hyperintensities revealed from genetic data of the UK biobank

Rainer Malik

Rainer Malik works as Postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research in Munich, Germany since 2009. Originally from Austria, he studied molecular biology at the University of Salzburg, before he obtained his PhD in computer science from the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. His main interest is the genetics of complex neurological disease and his main focus is stroke.

Predicting rupture risk of intracranial aneurysm using genetic risk, aneurysm location, multiplicity, and age at rupture

Mark K. Bakker

Mark K. Bakker is from the University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands. His research interests involve genetics, intracranial aneurysms and risk prediction.

Aneurysm growth on brain imaging and the absolute risk of rupture in intracranial aneurysms

L.T. van der Kamp

Dr. L.T. van der Kamp studied medicine at Utrecht University. In medical school, she was a board member of the curriculum committee and pursued research projects in different fields of medicine (neonatal neurology, internal medicine, gynecology and neurology). After her graduation in 2020, she started as a PhD student at the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery of the University Medical Centre Utrecht. Her PhD Project on unruptured intracranial aneurysms is supervised by Prof G.J.E. Rinkel, dr. M.D.I Vergouwen, and dr. I.C. van der Schaaf, and focusses on prediction of aneurysm growth and rupture of unruptured aneurysms. It’s her ambition to conduct multicenter studies to distinguish low-risk from high-risk unruptured intracranial aneurysms. On the 30th of August, her first article of her PhD on the risk of rupture of growing aneurysms was published.

Genetic risk factors in cardioembolic stroke: MEGASTROKE cohort

Jara Cárcel Márquez

Jara Cárcel Márquez is a biotechnologist trained at the Pablo de Olavide University (Seville). To complement her academic background, she also obtained a master’s degree in Human Genetics and Genomics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Currently, Jara is pursuing her PhD in the Stroke Pharmacogenomics and Genetics group, led by Dr. Israel Fernández, at the Sant Pau Hospital Research Institute (Barcelona). This position has allowed her to learn about the complexity of stroke and its genetic architecture. In doing so, she has specialized in the management of big data, while acquiring notions in machine and deep learning algorithms. Due to her scientific interests, Jara is a member of the Spanish and International Stroke Genetics consortia. Her main fields of expertise are genome and epigenome wide association studies as well as Mendelian Randomization analysis, areas in which she has contributed with several publications such as Carrera C, Cárcel-Márquez J, et al. “Single nucleotide variations in ZBTB46 are associated with post-thrombolytic parenchymal haematoma”. Brain. 2021 and Cárcel-Márquez J, Cullell N, et al. “Causal Effect of MMP-1 (Matrix Metalloproteinase-1), MMP-8, and MMP-12 Levels on Ischemic Stroke: A Mendelian Randomization Study”. Stroke. 2021.

Statins in patients with ischaemic stroke and cerebral microbleeds – individual-patient data analysis

Luis Prats-Sanchez

Luis Prats-Sanchez, MD, PhD is a stroke neurologist in the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona (Spain). He completed his medical degree in the University of Barcelona (UB) in 2008 and obtained his specialty in Neurology in Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol in Badalona (2013).  Then, he started  his fellowship training in Stroke Neurology (2013-2016) in Hospital de la Santa Creu I Sant Pau. In 2020 he obtained a Doctoral Thesis about the frequency, risk factors and outcome of remote hemorrhage after intravenous thrombolysis. Areas of interest include complications of intravenous thrombolysis, heart complications after stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage. He is leading a study about the influence of gut microbiome in the outcome  of intracerebral hemrorhage and a multicentre study about long-term outcome of patients with remote hemorrhage after intravenous thrombolysis.

Predictors for Cognitive Decline and Dementia Prior Stroke or TIA: PROGRESS Trial

Jessica Gong

Jessica Gong is a final year Scientia PhD candidate at the George Institute for Global Health, Australia. Her research focuses on understanding the risk factors for cognitive decline and dementia, particularly the sex differences in these risk factors. In addition, she is interested in understanding cognitive decline and dementia in the general population and high-risk cohorts, such as people with prior stroke or transient ischemic attack and people with diabetes. Before starting her doctoral research, she completed her master’s degree in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience from the University of Melbourne.

Association between oral anticoagulants and the risk of dementia

Christel Renoux

Dr. Christel Renoux is a pharmacoepidemiologist and neurologist, Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, Associate Member in the Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health at McGill University, and an Investigator at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology at the Jewish General Hospital-Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research. She is also a member of the Canadian Network for Observational Drug Effect Studies. Her research program centers on the safety and effectiveness of drugs using large health databases, with a special interest in cerebrovascular diseases. Her research program is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

Alvi Rahman

Dr. Alvi Rahman is a PhD. Candidate in Epidemiology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, with a specialization in pharmacoepidemiology. Previously, he completed an MSc. in Epidemiology at the University of Ottawa. His current research focuses on drug safety and effectiveness in neurology and cardiovascular medicine. He also has a particular interest in the assessment of drug-drug interactions. Alvi is a recipient of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research – Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship and the Richard H. Tomlinson Doctoral Fellowship.

Cerebral venous sinus thrombosis following vaccination against COVID-19: a UK multicentre cohort study

Richard Perry

Richard Perry qualified in Medicine at Oxford University.  He completed a PhD at Cambridge University, discovering a new ion exchange pump (the sodium/calcium/potassium exchanger, published in Nature).  After qualifying as a doctor he worked in Oxford for five years before moving to London to study the spatial attention system in the human brain using functional MRI (published in Brain).  He then completed his neurological training in London, before taking up his current post as a Neurology Consultant at The National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery, Queen Square.  He was the inaugural Clinical Lead for the new Hyperacute Stroke Unit at University College Hospital.  He then led the successful bid to host a Hyperacute Stroke Research Centre and has been the Clinical Lead for the Centre ever since.

During the last year his research has focussed on the impact of COVID-19 on the numbers of patients admitted to hospital with stroke (published in Journal of Neurology), the impact of COVID-19 on stroke itself (in JNNP), and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis following vaccination against COVID-19 (in The Lancet).  He also contributed as a co-author to reports on the neurological complications of COVID-19 (in Brain) and arterial stroke following vaccination against COVID-19 (in JNNP).

APACHE-AF trial

C.J.M. Klijn

Professor C.J.M. (Karin) Klijn is professor and chair of Neurology at the Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, since 2015. She trained in Neurology at the University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands, with Prof Jan van Gijn, and obtained her PhD in 2001 (Carotid artery occlusion, the haemodynamic perspective; cum laude). In 2003 she worked as stroke fellow in Perth, Australia, with Prof Graeme Hankey. After her return to Utrecht, she started studying intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) and its causes. In addition to the APACHE-AF trial (www.apache-af.nl), she is leading the FETCH study (Finding the ETiology in spontaneous Cerebral Hemorrhage, a multicentre cohort study of patients with spontaneous ICH, using 3T and 7T MRI and pathology studies to better characterize small vessel disease in spontaneous ICH), and the DUTCH ICH surgery pilot study (www.dutch-ich.nl, part of CONTRAST, co-PI Dr Ruben Dammers, neurosurgeon, aiming to establish whether minimally-invasive endoscopy-guided surgery improves outcome after supratentorial ICH).

Floris Schreuder

Floris Schreuder works as a neurologist with vascular interest at the Radboud University Medical Center. His research is focussed on intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) and cerebral amyloid angiopathy, and includes etiological, diagnostic and therapeutic studies. He is member of the executive committee of the APACHE-AF trial (NCT02565693), a multicentre phase II randomized trial investigating whether to restart or avoid anticoagulation after an anticoagulation-associated ICH (final results will be presented at ESOC 2021 on Friday 3rd of September in the Large Clinical Trials session). Also, he is member of the executive committee of the Dutch Intracerebral Haemorrhage Surgery Trial (DIST, NCT03608423) pilot study, a multicentre phase II study which aims to determine the safety and technical efficacy of minimally invasive neurosurgery in ICH (results will be presented at ESOC 2021 on Friday 3rd of September in Scientific Communications 020 Session). He is principal investigator of the ACTION study (NCT04834388; Anakinra in Cerebral hemorrhage to Target secondary Injury resulting from Neuroinflammation) and CHIPS study (NTR NL8831; Cerebral Haemorrhage associated Inflammation, a PET/MRI Study). In January 2021, Floris defended his PhD thesis entitled “Non-invasive imaging of the carotid artery: from structural vessel wall to functional plaque imaging”.

Bart van der Worp

Bart van der Worp is a neurologist with a special interest in cerebrovascular diseases at the University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He has been (co-)Chief Investigator of the randomised stroke trials HAMLET, PAIS, COOLIST, and VAST and is (co-)Chief Investigator of PRECIOUS, APACHE-AF, and MR ASAP. He is a member of the Dutch CONTRAST consortium which aims to identify and test new treatments for patients with acute ischaemic stroke or intracerebral haemorrhage. He is Past President of ESO.

SOSTART Trial & RESTART follow-up

Rustam Al-Shahi Salman

Rustam Al-Shahi Salman is a professor of clinical neurology, head of the cerebrovascular research group, and clinical director of the Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Edinburgh, and an honorary consultant neurologist in NHS Lothian. He became interested in neurology during medical training in Cambridge and was inspired to work on common neurological problems by the stroke research group in Edinburgh, which he joined in 1998 as an MRC clinical training fellow, progressing to MRC patient-oriented clinician scientist and senior clinical fellowships until 2016. Rustam’s clinical and research interests focus on the frequency, prognosis, treatment, and pathophysiology of intracranial haemorrhage, using research methods such as randomised controlled trials, community- or population-based cohort and case-control studies, brain banking, and meta-analysis. His clinical work includes acute TIA/stroke/neurology services and specialist outpatient clinics. Rustam was one of the lead authors of The Lancet’s 2014 Series on Increasing Value and Reducing Waste in Research (http://www.thelancet.com/series/research and http://www.thelancet.com/campaigns/efficiency) and a founding member of the REWARD Alliance (http://rewardalliance.net). He has received funding from the MRC, British Heart Foundation, Stroke Association, Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland, the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government, and GE Healthcare (see www.whopaysthisdoctor.org/doctor/276/active). Rustam welcomes contact from trainee doctors interested in pursuing independently-funded clinical research fellowships to answer important questions about stroke due to any form of intracranial haemorrhage. You can follow Rustam on Twitter at @BleedingStroke.

TIMING study

Jonas Oldgren

Jonas Oldgren is Professor of Coagulation Research at Uppsala University, Senior consultant in Cardiology at Uppsala University Hospital, and Executive director of Uppsala Clinical Research Center (UCR), a non-profit academic clinical research organization within Uppsala University and Uppsala University Hospital. Dr Oldgren has been investigator, national coordinator, and more recently executive steering committee member and/or coordinating investigator in several large-scale randomized clinical trials in cardiovascular medicine, e.g. ABC AF, DAPA-MI, EMANATE, RE-LY, RE-DEEM, RE-DUAL PCI, SPIRRIT-HFpEF, and SCOREd, and served in data safety monitoring boards of multinational clinical trials. Dr Oldgren was a member of the task force for the 2016 European Society of Cardiology Atrial Fibrillation Guidelines, participated in the writing committee for European Heart Rhythm Association NOAC Practical guide 2013, 2015, 2018, and 2021, and has published more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals.

Signild Åsberg

Signild Åsberg is Associate Professor and researcher in Stroke Medicine at Uppsala University, Senior Consultant at the Stroke Unit at Uppsala University Hospital, Member of the Steering Committee of the Swedish Stroke Register, the national quality register for stroke care in Sweden, and Chair of the Stroke Council in Uppsala County Council. Dr Åsberg has performed several large observational register-based observational studies using cross-linkage with comprehensive national registries, mainly focusing on secondary stroke prevention. Dr Åsberg has been investigator in clinical stroke trials, e.g. EFFECTS, SAINTS-I, STATICH, STROKE-CLOSE, and clinical event adjudicator in international clinical cardiovascular trials, e.g. DAPA HF/CKD, EMANATE, THEMIS, and VALIDATE.

THALES trial—secondary analysis

Claiborne “Clay” Johnston

Clay Johnston is the inaugural Dean of the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. His ambitious vision includes building a world-class medical school by creating a vital, inclusive health ecosystem that supports new and innovative models of education, health care delivery and discovery – all with a focus on improving health and making Austin a model healthy city. Clay is also a Neurologist, specializing in stroke care and research. He was formerly at the University of California, San Francisco where he served as Associate Vice Chancellor of Research and founding director of the Center for Healthcare Value. Clay is a graduate of Amherst College, completed medical school at Harvard University and received a PhD in epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.

CSPS.com trial

Kazunori Toyoda

Kazunori Toyoda (MD, PhD, FESO, FAHA) is Deputy Director General of the Hospital, National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center in Japan. He is a Board Member at the World Stroke Organisation and Fellow of the European Stroke Organisation, as well as a Board Member at the Japanese Society of Neurology, Japanese Stroke Society, Japanese Society of Hypertension, Japanese Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism and the Cardiovascular Stroke Society of Japan.

BASC collaborators: Short-term systolic BP variability and functional outcome after acute ICH: analyses of pooled individual participant data

Tom Moullaali

Tom Moullaali is a neurology trainee from Edinburgh, UK, who completed a British Heart Foundation-funded PhD about BP variability and ICH.

NETs trial: Neurogeneration enhanced by transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS)

Christian Gerloff

Christian Gerloff is professor of neurology and since 2006 director of the department of neurology at the university medical center (UKE) in Hamburg, Germany. After medical school in Freiburg, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, he joined the neurology residency program in Tuebingen, Germany, and worked as a postdoc for three years at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, U.S.A., with Mark Hallett and Leonardo G. Cohen. His clinical and scientific focus is on stroke, especially lesion-induced plasticity and reorganization of neural networks, and translation into clinical trials to improve acute (e.g., WAKE-UP trial) and long-term (e.g., NETS trial) care. He is married and has two children.

Hear from the ESO President, Martin Dichgans

Hear from the Conference Planning Group Chair, Joanna Wardlaw