Global Perspectives on Diagnosis and Management of Childhood Epilepsy Disorders: Focus on Dravet, Lennox-Gastaut, and Tuberous Sclerosis Complex

Dr. Elaine Wirrell is the Chair and Professor of Child Neurology and Program Director of Child and Adolescent Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She completed medical school at the University of British Columbia and her Pediatric Neurology training at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Dr. Wirrell is the past Co-chair of the Nosology and Status Epilepticus Task Force and a member of the Pediatrics Task Force of the International League Against Epilepsy. She serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Epilepsy.com and is on the Medical Advisory Board for the Dravet Syndrome Foundation and the Lennox-Gastaut Foundation.

Dr. Wirrell?s main research interests are in early onset, medically intractable epilepsies including developmental and epileptic encephalopathies and epidemiology and comorbidities of pediatric epilepsy. Additionally, Dr. Wirrell is the recipient of the 2021 Kiffin-Penry Award from the American Epilepsy Society and the 2016 Distinguished Clinician award from Mayo Clinic.

Dr. Dixon-Salazar is a neuroscientist, geneticist, and patient advocate. Her desire to get her PhD was inspired by her daughter who developed Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS) at the age of 2. She completed her PhD and postdoctoral work at UC, San Diego, where she studied the mechanisms of brain development and synaptic plasticity, identified genetic causes of rare disorders in children, and researched precision therapeutics in stem cell and animal models of pediatric disease. During her research tenure, and after 16 years of watching daily, unrelenting seizures in her child, she uncovered the driver of her daughter’s illness and identified a novel precision therapy that improved her child’s life.

Dr. Dixon-Salazar left academia after 15 years in the lab with a drive to decrease the amount of time it would take for patients to benefit from lab discoveries in epilepsy precision medicine. She worked as Associate Research Director at CURE Epilepsy helping to move funding forward for novel translational research in genomic medicine for patients with severe forms of pediatric-onset epilepsy. She then transitioned to the Director of Research and Strategy at the Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS) Foundation where she worked directly with patients to access precision therapies and partnered with researchers, clinicians, regulators, policymakers, therapy developers, and other advocacy groups to build a sustainable precision medicine infrastructure for all patients with epilepsy. Currently, Dr. Dixon- Salazar serves as the Executive Director of the LGS Foundation, where the mission is to improve the lives of individuals impacted by LGS through advancing research, awareness, education, and family support

Dr. Samba Reddy is a Regents Professor of neuroscience and experimental therapeutics and the Director of Texas A&M Institute of Pharmacology and Neurotherapeutics at Texas A&M University School of Medicine. He is a board-certified pharmacist and pharmacologist who is dedicated to developing new treatments for epilepsy and brain disorders. He has received continuous funding from the NIH for 18 years and is the principal lead on several projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US Department of Defense (DOD), and other organizations, in fields such as epilepsy, chemical neurotoxicity and brain injury. Dr. Reddy has made groundbreaking contributions to the field of neurotherapeutics, including the discovery of the “neurosteroid replacement therapy” for epilepsy and women’s health. His research has paved the way for the FDA approval of two new neurosteroid medicines for post-partum depression (brexanolone) and refractory epilepsy (ganaxolone). He has published over 225 papers, five popular textbooks, and has mentored over 100 students and postdocs. He is a sought-after expert in his field and has been honored with numerous awards and recognition from prestigious organizations, including being named one of the world’s top 2% of scientists by Stanford University.

Adam Strzelczyk, MD, MHBA is a neurologist, geriatrician, and intensive care physician. His main research interests include health care research, clinical epileptology, electrophysiology, epileptic encephalopathies, and intensive care treatment of status epilepticus. He obtained his habilitation in 2014 at Philipps University Marburg on “Care, Cost of Illness, Morbidity and Mortality of Patients with Epilepsy.” Since 2006 he worked as a resident and since 2012 as a senior physician at the Epilepsy Center Hessen of the University Hospital Marburg in Germany. Since 2015 he has served as lead consultant and head of the Working Group on Health Economics and Outcome Research in Epilepsy at the Epilepsy Center Frankfurt Rhine-Main of the Goethe University Frankfurt. Since 2017 Dr. Strzelczyk has been a member of the executive board of the German ILAE chapter and serves as an editor of the Austrian, German, and Swiss epilepsy journal, “Clinical Epileptology “. Since 2015 he has served as a member of the executive board of the Austrian, German, and Swiss Working Group on Epilepsy Surgery, and as senior author of the Austrian, German, and Swiss quality guidelines for epilepsy surgery.

Dr. Bethany Thomas is an Epilepsy Nurse Practitioner and the Lead NP Clinical Coordinator for the Department of Neurology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Thomas earned her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree (along with Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in nursing) from Thomas Jefferson University.

Dr. Thomas has given several presentations at national scientific conferences on the treatment and care of pediatric and adult patients with epilepsy. She is the recipient of multiple Penn CARES grants (2015, 2016, 2018), the Miriam M. Powell Scholarship (2019), and the Barbara Todd Leadership Award (2022). She is a member of several professional societies and committees, including the American Academy of Neurology and the Pennsylvania Coalition of Nurse Practitioners, and is a founding member of the American Epilepsy Society’s Advanced Practice Provider Committee.