15^th Global Neurologists Meeting on Neurology and Neurosurgery November 08-09, 2023 Paris, France

Biography:

• Doctor of Philosophy in Pharmaceutical Sciences (Pharmacology & Toxicology), Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, 2009. The defended thesis was entitled: “Pharmacological Study of the Possible Role of Magnesium supplementation in Experimental Animals”
• Master Degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences (Pharmacology & Toxicology), Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, 2004. The defended thesis was entitled: “Pharmacological Evaluation of Possible Antiulcer Effects of Certain Natural and Synthetic Agents in Normal and Protein Malnourished Animals”
• Bachelor Degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, 1999 (Grade: Excellent with honor).
University Career:
• Associate Professor & Acting Head of Pharmacology & Biochemistry Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, The British University in Egypt (Since 2017).
• Associate Professor in Pharmacology & Toxicology Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University (2015-2017).
• Lecturer in Pharmacology & Toxicology Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University (2009-2015).
• Assistant Lecturer in Pharmacology & Toxicology Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University (2004-2009).
• Demonstrator in Pharmacology & Toxicology Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University (1999-2004).

Abstract:

The heterogeneous nature of multiple sclerosis (MS) and the unavailability of treatments addressing its intricate network and reversing the disease state is yet an area that needs to be elucidated. Liraglutide, a glucagon-like peptide-1 analogue, recently exhibited intriguing potential neuroprotective effects. The currents study investigated its potential effect against mouse model of MS and the possible underlying mechanisms. Demyelination was induced in C57Bl/6 mice by cuprizone (400 mg/kg/day p.o.) for 5 weeks. Animals received either liraglutide (25 nmol/kg/day i.p.) or dorsomorphin, an AMPK inhibitor, (2.5 mg/Kg i.p.) 30 min before the liraglutide dose, for 4 weeks (starting from the second week). Liraglutide improved the behavioral profile in cuprizone-treated mice. Furthermore, it induced the re-myelination process through stimulating oligodendrocyte progenitor cells differentiation via Olig2 transcription activation, reflected by increased myelin basic protein and myelinated nerve fiber percentage. Liraglutide elevated the protein content of p-AMPK and SIRT1, in addition to the autophagy proteins Beclin-1 and LC3B. Liraglutide halted cellular damage as manifested by reduced HMGB1 protein and consequently TLR-4 downregulation, coupled with a decrease in NF-κB. Liraglutide also suppressed NLRP3 transcription. Dorsomorphin pre-administration indicated a possible interplay between AMPK/SIRT1 and NLRP3 inflammasome activation as it partially reversed liraglutide's effects. Immunohistochemical examination of Iba⁺ microglia emphasized these findings. In conclusion, liraglutide exerts neuroprotection against cuprizone-induced demyelination via anti-inflammatory, autophagic flux activation, NLRP3 inflammasome suppression, and anti-apoptotic mechanisms, possibly mediated, at least in part, via AMPK/SIRT1, autophagy, TLR-4/ NF-κB/NLRP3 signaling. The potential mechanistic insight of Lira in alleviating Cup-induced neurotoxicity via: (1) AMPK/SIRT1 pathways activation resulting in the stimulation of brain autophagy flux (confirmed by lowering Beclin-1 and LC3-B protein expression). (2) Inhibition of NLRP3 inflammasome activation, as evidenced by reduced HMGB1, TLR-4, NF-κB and NLRP3 protein expression, alongside diminishing the activation of its downstream cascade as reflected by reduced levels of caspase-1 and IL-1β protein expression. (3) A possible modulating interplay between the previously mentioned two pathways.

Biography:

Meijuan Lu is an academic researcher from South China University of Technology. The author has contributed to research in topic(s): Catalysis & Toluene. The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 5 publication(s) receiving 124 citation(s). Previous affiliations of Meijuan Lu include Jiangxi Agricultural University.

Abstract:

Methods: This nationwide population-based retrospective cohort study assessed 23,084 patients newly diagnosed with SLE between 1999 and 2009, using the database of the Taiwan National Health Insurance program.

Conclusions: This nationwide retrospective cohort study provided information that combined therapy with TCM may improve the survival in SLE patients. This study also suggests that TCM may be used as an integral element of effective therapy for SLE.

Biography:

Dr. Fresthel Monica M. Climacosa finished her Bachelor of Science in Biology, graduating as a magna cum laude, in the University of the Philippines Manila in 2010. She is one of the pioneer graduates of the country’s only dual degree program: Doctor of Medicine – Doctor of Philosophy (MD-PhD) in Molecular Medicine, a joint effort of the Department of Science and Technology’s Philippine Council for Health Research and Development (DOST-PCHRD) and the University of the Philippines College of Medicine. She received the Dr. Adolfo Belosillo award for the Most Outstanding MD-PhD Graduate and the DOST-PCHRD’s Most Outstanding MD-PhD Dissertation for her study entitled “Development and Characterization of Microbe-binding Peptides for Opsonization of Microbial Contaminants” in 2018. She was also awarded an Academic Distinction in Medicine for garnering a cum laude standing in her Medicine courses.

Aside from being an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Microbiology in the College of Public Health, she is also the college’s Intellectual Property Officer and Champion and is serving as the faculty-in-charge of the University of the Philippines – National Institutes of Health’s Philippine Study group on Emerging biological and bioactive Agents (PhilSEA).

Her research studies mainly focus on the humoral immunity to emerging and reemerging infectious diseases.

Abstract:

Aetiological and clinical heterogeneity is increasingly recognized as a common characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. This heterogeneity complicates diagnosis, treatment, and the design and testing of new drugs. An important line of research is discovery of multimodal biomarkers that will facilitate the targeting of subpopulations with homogeneous pathophysiological signatures. High-throughput ‘omics’ are unbiased data-driven techniques that probe the complex aetiology of Alzheimer’s disease from multiple levels (e.g. network, cellular, and molecular) and thereby account for pathophysiological heterogeneity in clinical populations. This review focuses on data reduction analyses that identify complementary disease-relevant perturbations for three omics techniques: neuroimaging-based subtypes, metabolomics-derived metabolite panels, and genomics-related polygenic risk scores. Neuroimaging can track accrued neurodegeneration and other sources of network impairments, metabolomics provides a global small-molecule snapshot that is sensitive to ongoing pathological processes, and genomics characterizes relatively invariant genetic risk factors representing key pathways associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Following this focused review, we present a roadmap for assembling these multiomics measurements into a diagnostic tool highly predictive of individual clinical trajectories, to further the goal of personalized medicine in Alzheimer’s disease.

Biography:

Raffaele Pilla, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Doctor Europaeus, received his Master’s degree in Pharmacy at G. d’Annunzio University in Chieti-Pescara, Italy in 2005, where he also served internships at the Cell Physiology Laboratory and Molecular Biology Laboratory. Prior, he was an Erasmus Student at Faculté de Pharmacie de Reims in Reims, France. He received his Doctor Europaeus in 2010 from Pitié-Salpétrière Institute in Paris, France. Also in 2010, he received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Physiology, and Pathology of Muscle at G. d’Annunzio University in Chieti-Pescara, Italy. He was hired as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida in Tampa, on two research grants funded by the Office of Naval Research (US Navy) and Divers’ Alert Network. He has written and lectured widely worldwide. He has been involved in ongoing research at the University of South Florida with the use of ketone esters.

Abstract:

It has been recently shown that nutritional ketosis is effective against seizure disorders and various acute/chronic neurological disorders. Physiologically, glucose is the primary metabolic fuel for cells. However, many neurodegenerative disorders have been associated with impaired glucose transport/metabolism and with mitochondrial dysfunction, such as Alzheimer’s/Parkinson’s disease, general seizure disorders and traumatic brain injury. Ketone bodies and tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediates represent alternative fuels for the brain and can bypass the rate- limiting steps associated with impaired neuronal glucose metabolism. Therefore, therapeutic ketosis can be considered as a metabolic therapy by providing alternative energy substrates. It has been estimated that the brain derives over 60% of its total energy from ketones when glucose availability is limited. In fact, after prolonged periods of fasting or ketogenic diet (KD), the body utilizes energy obtained from free fatty acids (FFAs) released from adipose tissue. Because the brain is unable to derive significant energy from FFAs, hepatic ketogenesis converts FFAs into ketone bodies-hydroxybutyrate (BHB) and acetoacetate (AcAc)-while a percentage of AcAc spontaneously decarboxylates to acetone. Large quantities of ketone bodies accumulate in the blood through this mechanism. This represents a state of normal physiological ketosis and can be therapeutic. Ketone bodies are transported across the blood-brain barrier by monocarboxylic acid transporters to fuel brain function. Starvation or nutritional ketosis is an essential survival mechanism that ensures metabolic flexibility during prolonged fasting or lack of carbohydrate ingestion. Therapeutic ketosis leads to metabolic adaptations that may improve brain metabolism, restore mitochondrial ATP production, decrease reactive oxygen species production, reduce inflammation, and increase neurotrophic factors’ function. It has been shown that KD mimics the effects of fasting and the lack of glucose/insulin signaling, promoting a metabolic shift towards fatty acid utilization. In this work, the author reports a number of successful case reports treated through metabolic ketosis.

Biography:

Enguo wang, male, professor of psychology at the university of henan, doctoral tutor. Psychology and behavior of henan province, deputy director of the laboratory. The Chinese psychological society general and director of the institute of experimental psychology, psychological association deputy secretary-general of henan province.In the domestic authority of professional journals published 36 papers, published book four, participated in five works. Presided over by the national natural science fund and the ministry of education humanities and social science project and so on many topics.

Abstract:

The altered functional connectivity (FC) level and its temporal characteristics within certain cortical networks, such as the default mode network (DMN), could provide a possible explanatory framework for Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In the current study, we hypothesized that the topographical organization along with its temporal dynamics of the autistic brain measured by temporal mean and variance of complex network measures, respectively, were significantly altered, which may further explain the autistic symptom severity in patients with ASD. To validate these hypotheses, the precise FCs between DMN regions at each time point were calculated using the resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) datasets from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) project. Then, the minimal spanning tree (MST) technique was applied to construct a time-varying complex network of DMN. By analyzing the temporal mean and variance of MST parameters and their relationship with autistic symptom severity, we found that in persons with ASD, the information exchange efficiencies between cortical regions within DMN were significantly lower and more volatile compared with those in typical developing participants. Moreover, these alterations within DMN were closely associated with the autistic symptom severity of the ASD group.

Biography:

Dr.Felix-Martin Werner is working in Euro Akademie Pößneck, Pößneck Germany and Institute of Neuroscience of Castilla and León (INCYL) Laboratory 14, Salamanca, Spain.

Abstract:

A variety of screening approaches have been proposed to diagnose epileptic seizures, using electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) modalities. Artificial intelligence encompasses a variety of areas, and one of its branches is deep learning (DL). Before the rise of DL, conventional machine learning algorithms involving feature extraction were performed. This limited their performance to the ability of those handcrafting the features. However, in DL, the extraction of features and classification are entirely automated. The advent of these techniques in many areas of medicine, such as in the diagnosis of epileptic seizures, has made significant advances. In this study, a comprehensive overview of works focused on automated epileptic seizure detection using DL techniques and neuroimaging modalities is presented. Various methods proposed to diagnose epileptic seizures automatically using EEG and MRI modalities are described. In addition, rehabilitation systems developed for epileptic seizures using DL have been analyzed, and a summary is provided. The rehabilitation tools include cloud computing techniques and hardware required for implementation of DL algorithms. The important challenges in accurate detection of automated epileptic seizures using DL with EEG and MRI modalities are discussed. The advantages and limitations in employing DL-based techniques for epileptic seizures diagnosis are presented. Finally, the most promising DL models proposed and possible future works on automated epileptic seizure detection are delineated.

Biography:

PhD student of Tbilisi State University.

Abstract:

Age and estrogens may impact the mobility of N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) in hippocampal synapses. Here, we used serial section immunogold electron microscopy to examine whether phosphorylated tyrosine 1472 NR2B (pY1472), which is involved in the surface expression of NMDARs, is altered in the dorsal hippocampus of young (3-4 months old) and aged (∼24 months old) ovariectomized rats treated with 17β-estradiol or vehicle for 2 days. The number of gold particles labeling pY1472 was higher in presynaptic and postsynaptic compartments of aged rats with low estradiol (vehicle-treated) compared to other groups. In terminals, pY1472 levels were elevated in aged rats but reduced by estradiol treatment to levels seen in young rats. Conversely, the mitochondria number was lower in aged females but was restored to young levels by estradiol. In the postsynaptic density and dendritic spines, estradiol reduced pY1472 in young and aged rats. As phosphorylation at Y1472 blocks NR2B endocytosis, reduction of pY1472 by estradiol suggests another mechanism through which estrogen enhances synaptic plasticity by altering localization of NMDAR subunits within synapses.

Biography:

Ahmed Mohammed Alsehli is a PhD student studying at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Abstract:

Statins are the first-choice treatment against hypercholesterolemia and associated cardiovascular disease, the main global cause of morbidity and mortality according to WHO. Statins are among the most prescribed drugs worldwide with an estimated 25% of the world population older than 65 years currently under statin treatment and the numbers increasing. Currently, there is a large controversy about whether or not statins affect cognitive function. Studies have provided indications for both sides, as well as reported beneficial and detrimental effects. Altogether, findings in the literature are highly inconsistent. Thus, to reveal new insights into statin cognitive effects, we performed an observational study on a population-based sample of 245,731 control and 55,114 statin-taking individuals from the UK Biobank (Alsehli et al., Sci Rep. 2020 10, 6187). Cognitive performance in terms of reaction time, working memory and fluid intelligence was analysed at baseline and two follow-ups (within 5–10 years). Subjects were classified depending on age (up to 65 and over 65 years) and treatment duration (1–4 years, 5–10 years and over 10 years). Data were adjusted for health- and cognition-related covariates. Subjects generally improved in test performance with repeated assessment and middle-aged persons performed better than older persons. The effect of statin use differed considerably between the two age groups, with a beneficial effect on reaction time in older persons and fluid intelligence in both age groups, and a negative effect on working memory in younger subjects. Our analysis suggests a modulatory impact of age on the cognitive side effects of statins, revealing a possible reason for profoundly inconsistent findings on statin-related cognitive effects in the literature. The study highlights the importance of characterising modifiers of statin effects to improve knowledge and shape guidelines for clinicians when prescribing statins and evaluating their side effects in patients.

Biography:

Dr. Jarrett's research agenda has improved outcomes in trauma/critically ill patients by preventing complications. She published Easter's Rib Score and Protocol in 2002, and was awarded U.S. Patent #7,225,813. It has been cited numerous times in the literature and is the basis for the development of the management of rib fractures in emergency departments, critical care units, and outpatient settings.

Abstract:

Acute flaccid myelitis is a serious condition primarily affecting children. It attacks spinal cord gray matter, resulting in lower motor neuron injury and flaccid weakness in the extremities. Although the specific cause of most cases is unknown, viruses, toxins, and genetic disorders have been implicated. Preventing the spread of viral infections is crucial to preventing the spread of this potentially disabling disease. If acute flaccid myelitis is suspected, nurse practitioners must act quickly with the assistance of local or state health departments in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to implement evidence-based interventions for the patient.

Biography:

Dr. Kong is an associate clinical professor of Neurology and a board-certified UCI Health neuro-oncologist who specializes in the diagnosis and non-surgical treatment of primary brain tumors, metastatic cancers of brain and spinal cord, as well as neurological complications from tumors/cancers and their therapies such as radiation therapy, chemotherapy, immunotherapy as well as targeted therapy. Dr. Kong earned her medical degree from the Keck School of Medicine at USC. She completed an internship in internal medicine and a residency in neurology at UC Irvine Medical Center, followed by a fellowship in neuro-oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She also received her doctoral degrees from the University of Tokyo, Japan and Capital University of Medical Science in Beijing, China. Dr. Kong is deeply involved in managing clinical trials for brain and spinal cord tumors.

Abstract:

Primary malignant glioma or Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most aggressive brain tumor in adults. With maximized safe resection followed by the standard therapy consisting of radiation and chemotherapy with temozolomide, the median overall survival is only about 14 to 16 months and 5 year survival rate less than 5%. The treatment for the recurrence is more challenging. Administration of Bevacizumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting vascular endothelial growth factor (VGEF) inhibitor, is an approved therapy in the US for recurrent glioma, which does improve QOL but prolongs limited survival. A latest study showed that adding medical device tumor-treating fields (NovoTTF/Optune) improves the median overall survival to 20 months and 5-year survival rate to 13%. Other new therapies are currently being investigated in variety of clinical trials for the effectiveness. Here we will review recently developed therapeutic glioma vaccines, proteasome inhibitors, gene therapy, other immunotherapy and targeted therapy for the treatment of malignant brain tumors and the challenges.