Date: June 16 & 17, 2022
Venue: Gainesville, FL, USA
Organizers: Marianne Schmid Daners and Malisa Sarntinoranont
Our Keynote Speakers
Maria Lehtinen
Harvard Medical School, USA
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Maria Lehtinen is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Pathology at Boston Children’s Hospital. Her research focuses on the mechanisms by which the choroid plexus, an important brain barrier and producer of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), contributes to brain development and lifelong brain health. Dr. Lehtinen received her Ph.D. in Neurobiology from Harvard University where she trained with Dr. Azad Bonni on molecular mechanisms regulating neuronal survival and death. She joined Anna-Elina Lehesjoki’s lab for her early postdoctoral work at the University of Helsinki, where she investigated the role of redox homeostasis in progressive myoclonus epilepsy. Lehtinen carried out further postdoctoral training with Christopher A. Walsh at Harvard, where they found that secreted factors in the CSF play active roles in instructing the development and health of the mammalian brain. Dr. Lehtinen established her own laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2012, where she takes an interdisciplinary approach focused on basic and translational research related to choroid plexus-CSF-based signaling in the brain, with applications ranging from neurodevelopmental to age-associated neurologic diseases. Dr. Lehtinen currently holds the Hannah C. Kinney, MD, Chair in Pediatric Pathology Research. She is recipient of several awards including a New York Stem Cell Foundation – Robertson Stem Cell Investigator, H.W. Mossman Award in Developmental Biology from the American Association of Anatomists, and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). |
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Petra Klinge
The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, USA
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Petra Klinge serves as an internationally renowned clinician for diagnosing and neurosurgical treatment of patients with CSF disorders working on the unifying concept of cognitive problems related pathology in Hydrocephalus of aging and pediatric patients. Her practice also includes patients with associated developmental Cerebrospinal fluid disorders, such as spina bifida, Chiari malformation, tethered cord, patients with connective tissue disorders and associated spinal fluid disorders including syringomyelia and occult tethered cord syndrome. In collaboration with neuroradiology in her practice at Rhode Island Hospital and the Carney-Institute and the department of bio-engineering at the Brown Medical School she develops pioneering and novel clinical and in-vivo diagnostics and pathological studies to improve the management and validation of those conditions. In the past 2 years, Dr. Klinge has also collaborated with the University of Akron Conquer Chiari Research Center, founded by the Department of Psychology and the Department of Biomedical Engineering on the implications of ageing in Chiari as well as identifying cognitive and imaging biomarkers to support the biodynamic concept of the failure of Cerebrospinal fluid regulation at the base of the skull in adult Chiari malformation. Her research has focused on the failure of “Myodural bridges” and defunct collagen that supports the aspects of CSF circulatory failure at the base of the skull in various conditions including Chiari associated with connective tissue disease. She is also currently appointed by the National Academy of Sciences to serve in a committee to establish disability criteria for the neurological conditions in patients with Ehlers-Danlos-Syndrome and Marfan Syndrome. |
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