Invest in ME Research

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Date	Item	Source
Jan21:	Remembering Anne Örtegren	IiMER
Dec20:	Request to NICE from IiMER Successful	IiMER
Dec20:	IiMER Christmas Fund Appeal	IiMER
Dec20:	#GivingTuesday	IiMER
Nov20:	Request to NICE to remove GET	IiMER
Nov20:	NICE Draft Guidelines PR	IiMER
Sep20:	ME Conference Week 2021	IiMER
Aug20:	Severe ME - Stories and Media	IiMER
Jul20:	More on Funding Award for Research	IiMER
Jul20:	Press Release: Award for Research	IiMER
Jul20:	COVID-19, NICE and ME	IiMER
Jun20:	European Research Development	IiMER
Mar20:	Covid-19 and ME	IiMER
Mar20:	Developing European Clinical Expertise	IiMER

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Invest in ME Research is a UK charity run by volunteers and all work is carried out for free.
The charity does not receive government funding or huge donations from big institutions to run the conference.
We therefore welcome support in enabling us to create a major set of international cpd-accredited events that helps to make progress in researching and treating this disease.

We have now organised fifteen International ME conferences and ten Research Colloquiums and these events have an international reputation as events which can drive forward porgress in this disease which will benefit patients and healthcare organsations and, ultimately, society.

The IIMEC* events create a friendly atmosphere with the focus on research, treatments and progress. The events attract researchers, professionals working in healthcare (GPs, nurses, paediatricians etc.), students, media personnel, politicians and ME patient groups, patients and carers from around the world.

It therefore provides unique opportunities to reach a wide range of interest groups, as well as targeted individual groups.

Support Our Work

To enable us to provide the best Conference possible we welcome donations or sponsorship from companies, organisations, support groups and individuals to make the International ME Conferences and Colloquiums a success.
Sponsorship allows an organisation to be associated with an established and respected series of events in London which provides a platform for the latest research into ME and provides access to an audience of researchers, clinicians, doctors, nurses, occupational therapists, healthcare professionals and patient groups from up to twenty countries from around the world.
The venues chosen for these events also enhance possibilities for display and communication - right in the heart of London click here.

ME Conference Week 2020 in London, UK

The BRMEC* research Colloquiums are two-day events which bring together researchers and clinicians from countries around the world.
The intent is to make progress in research into ME via collaboration, sharing, discussion and creation of new initiatives.
As such the charity considers this a key event in the week's proceedings.

The annual pre-conference dinner hosted by the charity is for invited conference delegates and friends of the charity who will enjoy a dinner overlooking the River Thames and an evening of informal discussion, networking and relaxation amongst healthcare staff, patient delegates and, possibly even media representatives. The pre-conference dinners also have a keynote speech.

The international ME conference takes place in a purpose-built lecture theatre in the heart of Westminster next to Parliament.
The Great Hall is also where refreshments, lunch and discussion areas are available.
Sponsors can take an exhibition table at the conference to allow an elegant and direct way of discussing with healthcare staff, patient groups and carers.
The Great Hall is a spectacular venue offering ample space for presentation and networking both outside of and during conference lectures - your organisation will be able to take advantage of a unique opportunity to reach research, clinicians and patient groups and patients/carers.
See details of the venue here.

The charity also will be holding a full conference day for young and early career researchers. This facilitates the networking of new talent and new ideas into this field. The charity has worked with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to build this network.

Conference Packs

The charity provides a conference pack for all delegates to the Colloquiums and Conferences.
Inserts into this pack can be made available as a sponsoring opportunity.

The charity publishes a conference Journal of IiMER - a mix of news, research, events and opinion and this is included in the conference pack for each delegate - and later published on our website and distributed to thousands of subscribers around the world.
Half or full page adverts are possible. More details from Invest in ME Research.

Please note that sponsorship decisions are at the discretion of trustees of the charity.

Please Contact Us if you would like to help us by sponsoring the conference.

Comments about Invest in ME Research Conferences

Just wanted to congratulate you on an excellent conference last week. It was great to see so many of the leading researchers into ME all in one room, and all pulling in the same direction.
- Delegate

I really believe all this is due to the amazing job you have been doing through the years building up this network of research excellence connected to ME patients. It is said that if a boat is not pushed it will never advance… You are definitively the best motor the ME boat could have found. Also, without patient participation, researchers can do nothing. (From BRMEC6 researcher delegate)

Thank you for again making this conference available for ordinary patients at such a reasonable price. The conference was extraordinary and brought hope to me and my family. Thank you for all you are doing.
- Delegate

Fantastic conference, many thanks for your hard work. I thought it was fantastic, massively informative, encouraging, inspiring, necessary. It was very powerful hearing so much material from the doctors, researchers and speakers themselves, very, very impressive.
- Delegate

I enjoyed it all - especially being given ideas that may be able to use in practice and to be given ideas for where to look for future research to keep updated in CFS/ME practice. I have been able to gain a better understanding of CFS/ME and diagnostic criteria and changes to it. It is also very useful to be aware of research that is going on and how practices differ in UK to USA.
- From Conference feedback form (from NHS professional)

Thank you for a wonderfully organized conference! The yearly IiME conferences have become the most important events in Europe, with the best speakers and with focus on subjects that really matters in the battle that we are all fighting.
- Delegate

The diverse background of speakers pulling together novel research reflecting similar pathological phenotypes in chronic fatigue with numerous underlying genotypes and infections
- Delegate

It was a professional and superbly run Conference.
- Delegate

This really was the best conference yet ---- WELL DONE indeed to you. Every aspect of the conference works so well and the conference is beginning to get a family feel about it giving some of us the one and only chance each year to meet up.
- Delegate

Opened new lines for looking at literature references, in order to enhance research on CFS/ME.
- Delegate

Congratulations on holding such an excellent conference on ME/CFS.
This was the first time I actually attended such a conference. I was very impressed.
- Doctor

It is encouraging to see how much research is taking place and how many great medical professionals are making towards diagnosis and more recognition. Having relatives with ME feels much like a solitary experience and it is good to come to an event where there are people who are experiencing the same thing.
Very good organisation of the event, wide variety of speakers and materials.
- Delegate

You are doing incredible work. The whole event was absolutely brilliant.
- Delegate

You are certainly running things efficiently and well and are to be congratulated on arranging and managing this excellent conference!
- Delegate

the conference was extremely well attended - in terms of feedback it was re-assuring to hear that the academics are making clearer connections and encouraging the clinicians to think about the implications of these variables when treating patients.

SIIMEC4 clinician delegate

As voiced by many on the day, it seems a shame that the desperately needed tests and measures to confirm possible onset are not readily available and possibly the reason why there still remains a very" them and us" culture in the UK. The breaks and the opportunity to discuss patients individual experiences was also invaluable- I even came away with details of tried and tested interventions, which I will definitely pass on to my patients.

SIIMEC4 clinician delegate

Just wanted to congratulate you on an excellent conference last week. It was great to see so many of the leading researchers into ME all in one room, and all pulling in the same direction.
- Delegate

We would like to convey our sincerest gratitude to Invest in ME for organising such a fantastic conference. Without people like you, we and many, many others would be lost. Thank you for caring and for wanting to make a difference in the lives of suffering people. You all deserve a medal!.

JIIMEC3 delegate

Fantastic! The best ME conference I have been to and thanks to Invest in ME for making the price so realistic for pwme. I learned so much from this day. Keep up the good work.

HIIMEC3 delegate

To all at IiME Thank you so much for another fantastic conference. It was a joy and a relief to be able to listen to people who are starting to understand the biomedical complexities of this condition. Some extremely interesting speakers this year. We have to keep pushing and pushing. It goes without saying that your hard work is greatly appreciated.

RIIMEC3 delegate

Dr. Gibson spoke openly with regards to the inquiry into M.E. I hope that his report will reflect the true biomedical nature of M.E. Finally, may I say “Thank you” to the team members who were in charge of ordering, packaging and posting the DVD parcels. This must have been a mammoth task in itself!.

DoctorIIMEC1 delegate

Having watched the DVD I am so glad that there are still medical, charity and research professionals who are genuinely committed to helping ill patients. It is so refreshing to learn that doctors such as Bruce Carruthers and Byron Hyde still exist in our modern “evidence based” medical world. These doctors believe in listening to their patients and investigating their symptoms. They do not write patients off.

PatientIIMEC1 participant

Thank goodness for researchers such as Professor Hooper, Professor Puri and Dr. Kerr who have had the strength of character to persevere and continue to research M.E, an illness which has been denigrated by so many other researchers. And of course, Jane Colby, a dedicated charity worker who spoke with such passion about the children who suffer M.E and need so much help to convince social services and local education authorities that they are physically ill.

PatientIIMEC1 participant

Dear IiME, Thank you all for the hard work that went into making the ME Conference 2006 such a success. It was a huge undertaking and I am just so pleased that it was a success. I have just finished watching the conference on DVD for the second time and it was just like being part of the audience. The DVD recording equally professional.

PatientIIMEC1 participant

The ME experts were excellent and able to speak to their audience in an informative and enjoyable manner. What struck me most about all the speakers was their genuine commitment to their patients, research or charity work. Although all working in slightly different areas, they all share one common bond…..working towards finding the cause and cure for M.E.

PatientIIMEC1 participant

I watched the ME Conference DVD at the weekend. I have to confess that I cried all through the first DVD. Living with ME, you get so used to putting up with ignorance and misunderstanding, and so to hear a group of people gathered together in one room talking about ME sensibly, was just totally overwhelming. I can't thank you and everybody else enough for organising this event and for all the other work that you do.

ABIIMEC1 delegate

I really believe all this is due to the amazing job you have been doing through the years building up this network of research excellence connected to ME patients. It is said that if a boat is not pushed it will never advance… You are definitively the best motor the ME boat could have found. Also, without patient participation, researchers can do nothing. (From BRMEC6 researcher delegate)

Thank you for again making this conference available for ordinary patients at such a reasonable price. The conference was extraordinary and brought hope to me and my family. Thank you for all you are doing.
- Delegate

Fantastic conference, many thanks for your hard work. I thought it was fantastic, massively informative, encouraging, inspiring, necessary. It was very powerful hearing so much material from the doctors, researchers and speakers themselves, very, very impressive.
- Delegate

I enjoyed it all - especially being given ideas that may be able to use in practice and to be given ideas for where to look for future research to keep updated in CFS/ME practice. I have been able to gain a better understanding of CFS/ME and diagnostic criteria and changes to it. It is also very useful to be aware of research that is going on and how practices differ in UK to USA.
- From Conference feedback form (from NHS professional)

Thank you for a wonderfully organized conference! The yearly IiME conferences have become the most important events in Europe, with the best speakers and with focus on subjects that really matters in the battle that we are all fighting.
- Delegate

Thank you for again making this conference available for ordinary patients at such a reasonable price. The conference was extraordinary and brought hope to me and my family. Thank you for all you are doing.
- Delegate

Fantastic conference, many thanks for your hard work. I thought it was fantastic, massively informative, encouraging, inspiring, necessary. It was very powerful hearing so much material from the doctors, researchers and speakers themselves, very, very impressive.
- Delegate

Thank you for a wonderfully organized conference! The yearly IiME conferences have become the most important events in Europe, with the best speakers and with focus on subjects that really matters in the battle that we are all fighting.
- Delegate

The diverse background of speakers pulling together novel research reflecting similar pathological phenotypes in chronic fatigue with numerous underlying genotypes and infections
- Delegate

It was a professional and superbly run Conference.
- Delegate

This really was the best conference yet ---- WELL DONE indeed to you. Every aspect of the conference works so well and the conference is beginning to get a family feel about it giving some of us the one and only chance each year to meet up.
- Delegate

Opened new lines for looking at literature references, in order to enhance research on CFS/ME.
- Delegate

Congratulations on holding such an excellent conference on ME/CFS.
This was the first time I actually attended such a conference. I was very impressed.
- Doctor

It is encouraging to see how much research is taking place and how many great medical professionals are making towards diagnosis and more recognition. Having relatives with ME feels much like a solitary experience and it is good to come to an event where there are people who are experiencing the same thing.
Very good organisation of the event, wide variety of speakers and materials.
- Delegate

You are doing incredible work. The whole event was absolutely brilliant.
- Delegate

You are certainly running things efficiently and well and are to be congratulated on arranging and managing this excellent conference!
- Delegate

An amazing achievement to produce all of these presentations of the conference. I found it so informative and you have performed an incredible task in doing all of this.

PatientIIMEC1 delegate

I thoroughly enjoyed the conference and learnt a great deal, as well as brushing up my rather rusty immunology! I thought that the standard of the presentations was extremely high across the board, and covered a band of relevant and applicable topics; I shall certainly be attending next year’s conference if at all possible.

PatientIIMEC1 participant

The content is rivetting..especially being a physio/ mum of ME child, regarding the evidence behind exercise.

Professional/CarerIIMEC1 participant

Thank you so much for the wonderful Conference last Friday. I came away feeling more positive about the future for people with ME (my two children aged 17 and 13 have been diagnosed with it) than I have since they became ill.

GillIIMEC1 delegate

I attended the conference last Friday and had a great time – I enjoyed the event a great deal and felt that it was a huge success – you should be very pleased.' 'Many thanks for your help and many congratulations again on an excellent event.

DaveIIMEC1 delegate

The conference was so fantastic. I now feel fully armed to battle in ignorance about this disease in Denmark. How can any doctor look at the facts and doubt it is a physical disease. And yet...there was a least one doctor there who still was a Wessley-schooler. On the second day, I sat next to this man and when I told him I had ME/CFS he told me to try deep breathing techniques and asked me if I was a person who had a lot of self-doubt...... so...you can lead a fool to facts, but you can't make them think! Thanks again for all the effort that went into this conference.

RIIMEC2 delegate

I found the conference to be quite a revelation. I had no idea how bad the political situation is with ME. It has galvanised me into action, with writing to my MP and a comprehensive and vigorous defence of Dr Myhill. And I'm going to the Edinburgh Conference too. Thank you so much for the enormous undertaking you have embarked on. I shall be doing all I can to support you all.

NIIMEC2 delegate

I was delighted to see in attendance also my consultant and two of his staff which I think was vital for him to gain a better understanding about severe ME. I was especially pleased of the video that was shown really showing severe ME as this I think gave a very moving account of what it was to be in that position and would of had a huge impact on those watching it. Once again thanks for an exciting conference with excellent speakers. I shall look forward to the DVD.

TIIMEC4 delegate

Thank you SO MUCH for all your great work. And we are so glad you are doing the conference DVD's again this year, last years were a great resource of info and encouraging. I've just downloaded your first journal and will read it, slowly!!, with great interest. Will also tell others of the journal and the conference DVD's in the hope that they will buy them too.

SIIMEC2 delegate

I thought it was a great conference. I met many new people, but I also missed seeing many of those involved in the new CFS/ME services.

NIIMEC2 delegate

Many thanks for the wonderful conference. It was a great atmosphere and very uplifting to know of the wonderful work and people involved in helping us ME Sufferers. Back you all the way, and hope you will all recover soon from the tremendous effort you put in on our behalf and those of the researchers. It was a conference of excellence and it honoured us as well as raising us up!

JIIMEC2 delegate

Congratulations on your second successful ME/CFS Conference. I am so pleased that there will be a DVD of the conference. I am looking forward to watching it and finding out about the latest scientific research and facts on ME. I have just downloaded the first IiME Journal. It is very informative and professionally presented. I would like to say, "Thank you IiME," for all your hard work.

CIIMEC2 delegate

Dear Invest in ME Just wanted to congratulate you on an excellent conference last week. It was great to see so many of the leading researchers into ME all in one room, and all pulling in the same direction. So thank you for all your efforts in making the conference happen, it's very much appreciated.

CIIMEC2 delegate

Thank you so much to make that big event come true. I have a slight idea how much you worked to get the conference to such a success, to organise everything so perfectly and to bring together so many scientists and practitioners to tell us about their work and their progress in research and treatment.

RIIMEC2 delegate

I'm sure this event will bring us together more closely, and only as an international community we will be strong enough to change things for the better. So I'm sure that not only those who were so lucky to attend the conference are very grateful to you but all the hundreds of patients who were not able to come but will profit from its results.

RIIMEC2 delegate

Those were two great days full of extraordinary lectures, positive information and so many important contacts! I profited so much, I learned so much, I've met so many people I haven't met before - including you -, all this was so impressive. It will take me some weeks to process all the information I got which I will pass it on to the German spoken CFS/ME community. Thank you from Germany

RIIMEC2 delegate

Congratulations to everyone involved for a very successful Conference last week. Both days were interesting, fascinating, useful, well run and uplifting.....Thank you very very very much to everyone for all the work you are doing for people with M.E.

PIIMEC2 delegate

Just saw on your website that you did get a DVD done in the end - my massive thanks to everyone, there's a whole load of people out there who appreciate the work you're doing!

MIIMEC2 delegate

"Thank you to the organisers and speakers for a very interesting and stimulating meeting."

BIIMEC2 delegate

"Just wanted to say thanks for organising a conference with such impressive speakers & at such reasonable cost. As a humble parent, most conferences are completely out of my price range, so was really delighted to be able to attend. I picked up lots of info & have realised that I need to do loads more h/w to really be on top of all the stuff that’s been discovered since my daughter first became ill – 10 yrs ago."

HIIMEC2 delegate

"Congratulations on the Conference, it was very well organised with some excellent speakers. I was very pleased to see a number of our local CFS team present at the conference

AIIMEC2 delegate

"I am interested in the DVD & thank you all again for a great conference"

PIIMEC2 delegate

I enjoyed participating enormously and think the whole conference was a great success. Well done!

Dr NIIMEC2 delegate

"You are certainly running things efficiently and well and are to be congratulated on arranging and managing this second excellent conference! I am only just recovering from the efforts of attending the 2 day event and was about to send you a note of thanks for all your efforts and succeeding in facilitating a truly remarkable conference. It was great to see so many familiar faces, both amongst the audience and the presenters, and as you rightly say, the information conveyed was amazing and exciting. H aving said that - so much was known sooooo many years ago already! -

DIIMEC2 delegate

Perhaps two of the most important new developments were those reported by Ellen Piro on what has happened in Norway, and the new Clinic in Nevada reported on by Annette Whittemore and Daniel Peterson - they are very lucky in both instances! Thank you all again for all your hard work and all the trouble you have gone to in organizing, arranging and managing this remarkable event. Such conferences should have been arranged by the major UK ME/CFS charities long ago - Byron Hyde arranged the 1990 Cambridge event.

DIIMEC2 delegate

"I have come back home determined to help your cause. I am working on a plan to get the Local Press interested in doing a big piece on M.E. in our paper which is read by a very high percentage of people living in Guernsey - hopefully during May. My idea at the moment is to say that I have attended the Conference in London and have come back inspired and elaborate on what you have achieved.

JIIMEC2 delegate

You are a Great Team and deserve to be encouraged in every way possible. You are doing such a fantastic job. Oh boy, do these poor patients need encouragement!!!!! I happen to be one of the lucky ones and that is why I am happy to join in to help fight for those far less fortunate and with little support."

JIIMEC2 delegate

Fantastic conference, many thanks for your hard work. I thought it was fantastic, massively informative, encouraging, inspiring, necessary. It was very powerful hearing so much material from the doctors, researchers and speakers themselves, very, very impressive. I do agree that the speakers all came across as deeply humane. As a patient there was an enormous amount of useful applicable material and info on research hot from the lab so to speak.

NIIMEC2 delegate

Thanks for enquiring if I was OK, was only disorientated due to multiprocessing mayhem, which is worst symptom. A very good venue too, I noticed others remarked on what a pleasant environment, the term 'the organisers did us proud' came to mind. I've been thinking about it all day, as these are serious times requiring strategies. Thanks again, it was brilliant, you must be knackered. A brilliant effort, weight in gold.

NIIMEC2 delegate

"Just to say well done for once again organising such a great conference with brilliant, knowledgeable and dedicated speakers! We are moving forward!!"

LIIMEC2 delegate

To all the wonderful people who helped organising the ME Conference in May 2007!! Just a short note to say Thank you very much for all the hours that you must have spend to give us the opportunity to attend the Conference.

PIIMEC2 delegate

The conference was excellent!

JIIMEC3 delegate

The conference was great and it was really a good feeling to be among others who are working for the same aim. It was also great to see and to hear all these medical researchers who are able to explain at least a good part of this illness and to have the occasion to speak to them.

MIIMEC3 delegate

Well done for yet another excellent conference, keep up the good work.

JIIMEC2 delegate

I attended the second day - an excellent conference - many thanks.

MIIMEC2 delegate

It was a great pleasure to met up with you all again in London this week and congratulations must once more be extended on your terrific organisational talents in getting the job done. As well as the huge flow of information gained from the lectures (OK - some of it went over our heads), WE found it very beneficial to be able to meet with the important players in the ME world, those we were already acquainted with and some we weren't.

DIIMEC2 delegate

Hello To all the hard workers who made this conference come to fruition, you did a splendid job, and you so were so very kind to me, and that means so much to a ME sufferer, when back in my own environment you are looked on as a malinger, and probably have psychological problems. Well, I shall battle on undaunted spreading words and literature the best I can. A big thank you to all of you.

SIIMEC2 delegate

You organised the most impressive conference. I learnt so much and am very grateful to you.

IIMEC4 delegate

Thanks once again for such a wonderful Conference in London, the best I´ve ever seen.

JIIMEC4 delegate

Thank you for a great day in London, the 29 of May. It was an interesting conference.

IIIMEC4 delegate

Thank you for a really excellent conference. I particularly found Dr Nicolson's presentation helpful to bring all the strands together.

RIIMEC4 delegate

I would just like to thank you for putting on a wonderful conference full of excellent speakers and a wealth of information regarding severe ME. I consider myself to be one of those severe sufferers that you were highlighting this year and I also have a fiancee at home who also has severe ME for the last 20 years, so I am grateful to Invest in ME for bringing it to the attention of a wider audience.

TIIMEC4 delegate

Thank you for a wonderfully organized conference! The yearly IiME conferences have become the most important events in Europe, with the best speakers and with focus on subjects that really matters in the battle that we are all fighting.

EIIMEC4 delegate

the conference was top !!!.

AIIMEC4 delegate

Thank you for your excellent organization of the conference and for looking after me while juggling a thousand other details.

MIIMEC4 delegate

an excellent meeting

DelegateBRMEC6/IIMEC11

It was a wonderful series of meetings

DelegateBRMEC6/IIMEC11

The conference was fabulous.

DelegateIIMEC11

Am still reeling from such a wonderful conference and colloquium

DelegateBRMEC6/IIMEC11

.. terrific meeting. It gets better year by year

DelegateBRMEC6/IIMEC11

Thanks again to you for organizing this important meeting. I think that there are going to be more far-reaching effects than before

DelegateBRMEC6/IIMEC11

Thank you very much for all your efforts for the success of this event.

DelegateBRMEC6/IIMEC11

..enjoyed the conference and I look forward to reporting exciting progress with our collaboration...

DelegateBRMEC6/IIMEC11

thank you, once more, for the excellent organization of BRMEC6 and IIMEC11. ... just amazed of the good care you have taken in every single detail so that absolutely all would come up perfect. This year I specially felt researchers connected and ready to advance faster by collaborating. Also, I felt ME patients are much more encouraged. I really believe all this is due to the amazing job you have been doing through the years building up this network of research excellence connected to ME patients.

DelegateBRMEC6/IIMEC11

the conference was excellent.

DelegateIIMEC11

thanks for another great conference, I hope you know your considerable efforts are appreciated by a lot of patients, who are unable to respond effectively.

DelegateIIMEC11

Thank you for a wonderful conference in London last week!

DelegateIIMEC11

thank you for a wonderful colloquium and conference. The research is getting so exciting! You must have worked so hard to get it all together.

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

wanted to thank you as well for another excellent conference

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

I was extremely impressed by the colloquium/conference and by the obvious extensive work you put down! This disease is so devastating.

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

It is always an honor to be able to participate and present at the top CFS ME meeting in the world

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

Thank you once again for your superb organization of the IIMER events – I had such a great time and was grateful to participate.

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

Thanks for another wonderful ME colloquium and conference. Everyone thought it was all the best ever.

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

I just wanted to say how much we enjoyed the conference and learnt so much from the participants

DelegateIIMEC12

Thank you so much for a very interesting colloquium and conference! I learnt a lot and met many dedicated people.

DelegateIIMEC12

Thank you for an excellent conference.

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

it was my honor to join all of you at the conference, and I am so excited by the progress in the last year.

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

You and all of your volunteers are to be commended for what you have done to move the research forward

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

The conference was incredible and one can't help listening to the presentations that the next few years are going to bring so many new and impactful discoveries.

DelegateBRMEC7/IIMEC12

Amazing meeting.

DelegateBRMEC7

I send you and your team my heartfelt thanks for the last two days.

DelegateIIMEC12

I would like to thank you for the great meeting!

DelegateBRMEC7

Thanks for a very interesting conference!

DelegateIIMEC12

Thanks for a very interesting conference!

DelegateIIMEC12

I will definitely come next year.
Thank you for all you are doing to enhance research into this terrible disease.

DelegateIIMEC12

An excellent conference with amazing insights to the research being undertaken in ME.

DelegateIIMEC12

I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity and found it very useful.

DelegateBRMEC8/IIMEC13

Thoroughly enjoyed it.
The best ME/CFS meeting I have been to by a long way. Some real science now coming out of this field.

DelegateBRMEC8

I think your meetings are the best opportunity for networking outside the US.

DelegateBRMEC8/IIMEC13

I want to thank you for organizing this fantastic conference, every year. It is very helpful and contributes to clarify more about ME, not just by sharing researche performed in different countries but also the conversations had with ill people, relatives and carers during breaks. Lunch time gives clinical doctors, a lot of information to understand our day in and out with our ME patients in our clinics.

DelegateIIMEC13

Thank you also for the post conference dinner, I met with a lot of people, we shared experiences and finally we all learned and felt less lonely, with hope to change things, and I could share emails and phone numbers with other doctors and patients to keep in touch.

DelegateIIMEC13

Thank you very much to you and all the trustees for another excellent conference

DelegateIIMEC13

I really would like to thank you for inviting me at the Colloquium/Conference. It was a great experience to be part of such an amazing group. The work you are doing for the community is beyond words.

DelegateBRMEC8/IIMEC13

still taking in all the knowledge we gained in London. My sincere thanks to you for staging an important event

DelegateBRMEC8/IIMEC13

thank you, for the geat effort you put every year into this wonderful meeting

DelegateBRMEC8

Thank you for inviting me to this excellent meeting, this year was for me the most interesting so far.

ResearcherBRMEC5/IIMEC10 delegate

Very inspiring as usual.

ResearcherBRMEC5/IIMEC10 participant

Congratulations for organizing such an outstanding conference! I learned a great deal

ResearcherBRMEC5/IIMEC10 participant

Another well-done conference series!

ResearcherBRMEC5/IIMEC10 delegate

Thank you so much for the invitation to attend the conferences last week. They were both very well organized and the quality was fantastic.

ResearcherBRMEC5/IIMEC10 delegate

Thank you for a wonderful meeting in London last week. I hope you know how much we appreciate being a part of this "familiy". And yes - I agree that we are on our way to real and convincing progress.

ResearcherBRMEC5/IIMEC10 partiicpant

Thank you for a fantastic conference. A very special feeling when you sit in the auditorium filled with engaged interested ME persons - so great and important that you can travel back to your (own) country and feel that after all it DOES matter what we all do in our daily ME-work.

Patient Group RepresentativeIIMEC10 delegate

I wanted to thank you for another wonderful conference

Patient CarerIIMEC10 delegate

It’s always an inspiration to meet in London. We will be back next year.

DelegateIIMEC13

Thank you for organising such a wonderful colloquium and conference in London and for giving me the opportunity to attend. It was extremely interesting and great to hear about all of the research that is being undertaken in ME.

DelegateBRMEC8/IIMEC13

Just wanted to say well done on another great conference. It was my second year of attending and it’s such an informative and uplifting experience as a patient. So positive to know that there are such talented scientists who care enough to be working hard to figure it all out.
Invest in ME Research do such a great job getting everyone together and long may that continue because boy do we need you.

DelegateIIMEC13

thank you so much for a very interesting and meaningful week in London

DelegateBRMEC8/IIMEC13

An Overview of 15 Years of IiMER Conferences

IIMEC15 A 2021 Vision for ME #2021Vision4ME

IIMEC14 Invest in ME research #InvestinMEresearch

IIMEC13 Working Together #WorkingTogether

IIMEC12 Centres of Excellence for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

IIMEC9 Synergising the Research into Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

IIMEC8 Mainstreaming Research into Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

IIMEC7 Autoimmunity and Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

IIMEC6 The Way Forward for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

IIMEC5 A New Era in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Research

IIMEC4 Sub-Grouping and Treatments for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

IIMEC3 4Clinical Diagnosis, Research Trends & Educational Support

IIMEC2 Building a Future for Research into Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

IIMEC1 Initiating Research into Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

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Professor Malcolm Hooper

Professor Hooper graduated from University of London and had held appointments at Sunderland Technical College, Sunderland Polytechnic and the University of Sunderland, where he was made Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in 1993.
He has served at many UK universities as well as in India and Tanzania.
He has inaugurated links with Indian research institutions and universities and celebrated 25 years of productive and on-going links which have, particularly, involved the design and development of new drugs for tropical diseases and an exploration of natural products associated with Ayurvedic medicine. He has published some 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals in the field of medicinal chemistry together with major reviews on the Chemotherapy of Leprosy, the Chemistry of Isatogens. Edited one book on the Chemotherapy of Tropical Diseases.
He acted as a referee for a number of important journals and served on one editorial board. He has served on committees of the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC).

Emeritus Professor of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Sunderland

Professor Hooper is a member of a number of learned bodies, including the Royal Chemical Society, the British Pharmacological Society and the Society for Drug Research (SDR), now renamed the Society for Medicines Research, where he has served on the committee for 12 years and served as Chairman for 2 years.
This involved the planning and organising of major national and international conferences. He was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Gulf Veterans Association (GVA) and accepted by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as their nominee on the Independent Panel established to consider the possible interactions between Vaccines and NAPS tablets.
He has also served on the Gulf Support Group convened at the Royal British Legion. His involvement with the GVA brought contact with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalegic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/M.E.) and related disorders. Gulf War Illness/Syndrome (GWI/S) has much in common with M.E./CFS.
He is Patron of the Sunderland and South Shields M.E. Association and a member of the Newcastle Research Group, which includes eminent physicians and scientists performing research in to CFS/M.E., where one recent aspect has been the identification of organochlorine pesticide poisoning being misdiagnosed as M.E./CFS. He has addressed meetings of the Pesticide Exchange Network and consulted to the Organo-Phosphate Information Network (OPIN).
He worked with the Autism Research Unit (ARU) at the University of Sunderland for over 20 years, leading to involvement in biochemical studies to offer help, support and treatment for people with autism. This has also lead to research and urine-analysis of Indolyl-Acroyl-Glycine (IAG), which is an unusual metabolite found in excess of 90% of people examined in different groups of GWV, M.E./CFS and Organo-Phosphate (OP) poisoning sufferers. He served on the General Synod of the Church of England from 1970 to 1980 and he is a Christian Lay Leader, Preacher and Teacher.
He is currently involved in three environmental campaigns: Toxic waste dumping, including campaign against sewage in the sea presenting to the Select Committee on Sewage Treatment and Disposal GWI/S, presenting to the Defence Select Committee M.E./CFS and OP/Pesticide poisoning

Professor Simon Carding

Research Leader, Quadram Institute Bioscience, Norwich Research Park, UK

Upon completing postgraduate work at the Medical Research Council’s Clinical Research Centre in Harrow, Professor Carding “emigrated” to the USA to take up a postdoctoral position at New York University School of Medicine, and then at Yale University as a Howard Hughes Fellow in the Immunobiology Group at Yale University with Profs Kim Bottomly and Charlie Janeway Jr. While at Yale an interest in gamma-delta (γδ) T cells was acquired working closely with Adrian Hayday on molecular genetics and then with Prof. Peter Doherty to establish their role in (viral) infectious disease.
He left Yale after five years to take up a faculty position at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he developed a research interest in mucosal and GI-tract immunology, performing studies in germfree mice with Prof John Cebra that helped establish the role of gut microbes in the aetiology of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
After 15 years in the USA, he returned to the UK to take up the Chair in Molecular Immunology at the University of Leeds where he established a new research programme on commensal gut bacteria and Bacteroides genetics leading to the development of a Bacteroides drug delivery platform that is being used for developing new interventions for IBD and for mucosal vaccination.
In 2008 he was recruited by UEA and IFR to develop a gut research programme, taking up the Chair of Mucosal Immunology at UEA-MED and the position of head of the Gut Biology Research Programme at IFR, which later became part of the Gut Health and Food Safety (GHFS) Programme.
GHFS research covers a broad area of gut biology including epithelial cell physiology, mucus and glycobiology, mucosal immunology, commensal microbiology, foodborne bacterial pathogens, and mathematical modelling and bioinformatics. The success of this programme has led to the establishment of the Gut Microbes and Health research programme that is integral to the research agenda of The Quadram Institute.

Professor Angela Vincent

Emeritus Professor of Neuroimmunology, University of Oxford

Professor Vincent is Emeritus Professor of Neuroimmunology at the University of Oxford, and an Emeritus Fellow of Somerville College. She holds an Honorary Consultant position in Immunology and runs the Clinical Neuroimmunology service which is an international referral centre for the measurement of antibodies in neurological diseases.

Together with colleagues she collaborates with neurologists worldwide. She was formerly Head of Department of Clinical Neurology (2005-2008), and is a Past President of the International Society of Neuroimmunology, and an Associate Editor of Brain.

She was a co-applicant and group leader of OXION, the Wellcome Trust-funded Integrative Physiology Initiative "Ion channels and Diseases of Electrically Excitable Cells". She is a member of Faculty of 1000 (Neuroscience, Neurobiology of Disease and Regeneration)

Her major interest is in the role of autoimmunity in neurological diseases, including multiple sclerosis and auto-antibody mediated ion channel and receptor disorders. Recent advances have included (a) the discovery that maternal antibodies to different fetal proteins can cause rare neuromuscular disorders, and may be involved in some forms of autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders; (b) the definition and characterisation of a new form of myasthenia gravis associated with antibodies to a receptor tyrosine kinase, MuSK, that performs an important maintenance role at the neuromuscular junction; and (c) the recognition that some central nervous system disorders, involving memory loss, seizures, movement disorders, can be caused by antibodies to potassium ion channels and to various receptor proteins.

In these, and several other conditions, new ways are being devised to measure the pathogenic antibodies for better clinical diagnosis, and establishing model in vitro and in vivo systems for investigation of the pathophysiology of the diseases. Her group also works, in collaboration with Profs David Beeson and Nick Willcox, on the genetics of myasthenia and the factors that determine autoimmune responses to the main target, the acetylcholine receptor.

Associate Professor Mady Hornig

Associate Professor, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, New York, USA

Mady Hornig, MA, MD is a physician-scientist and Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health,. She did her undergraduate studies as a College Scholar at Cornell, received an MA in Psychology from The New School for Social Research and an MD from The Medical College of Pennsylvania and completed her residency in psychiatry at The Medical Center Hospital of Vermont and an NIMH/NRSA Neuropsychopharmacology Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research leverages large epidemiologic cohorts, novel bench science and animal model studies to determine how microbial, immune and toxic exposures impact upon the brain across the life course, resulting in disorders such as autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infection (PANDAS), mood disorders, schizophrenia, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and age-related cognitive deficits.

Dr. Hornig is internationally known for her work in the growing research arena exploring the mechanisms of gut-immune-brain axis functioning, seeking clues to both the understanding of the roots of dysfunction as well as uncovering pathways that strengthen individual resiliency. She has a keen interest in how diet, exercise and environmental factors affect each individual’s intestinal bacteria – the so-called gut microbiome – which then influences brain function through alterations in blood-borne molecules.

She has identified naturally-occurring substances that appear to strengthen resistance to certain disease states affecting the brain, and is pursuing these as candidates for prevention and intervention in ME/CFS and autism. She uses immune profiling, metabolomic, proteomic, epigenetic and microbiome approaches to identify prenatal and birth biomarkers for brain disorders in large prospective studies in Scandinavia as well as the US. She is also applying these approaches to uncover markers of disturbed immunity and metabolism correlating with the severe clinical deficits that underlie ME/CFS, work launched with support from the Hutchins Family Foundation/Chronic Fatigue Initiative, the National Institutes of Health and the crowd-funding initiative, The Microbe Discovery Project. Perhaps most exciting is that new ME/CFS subsets that appear to have different triggers and may respond differentially to treatment are now being identified through her work.

Dr. Hornig’s approach is enriched by her unusual combination of decades of experience as a clinical researcher, her acumen in defining novel neuropharmacological and nutritional approaches for brain disorders and her ability to carefully tease out factors that enhance resiliency to disease.

In 2004, Dr. Hornig presented to the Institute of Medicine Immunization Safety Review Committee and testified twice before congressional subcommittees regarding the role of infections and toxins in autism pathogenesis and has lectured on ME/CFS throughout the world. She has over 120 peer-reviewed publications, has edited several books, and has received many academic awards. Her work has been featured by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Discover Magazine, Nature Medicine, Science, Wired, the Huffington Post, O Magazine, CBS News, and This Week in Virology.

She is a member of the President’s Council of Cornell Women, and maintains a strong connection with organizations focused on disabilities, such as The Microbe Discovery Project, #MEAction, #MillionsMissing and The Global Autism Project; the environment, including Riverkeeper and the Collaborative on Health and the Environment; and music, including a close association with Jazz at Lincoln Center as a member of the Chairman’s Circle and a member of Unsettled Scores, a community choir.

Professor Ian Charles

Director Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK

Professor Ian Charles joins the Institute of Food Research in May 2015 to lead the programme to develop the UK’s new Centre for Food & Health to be based at the Norwich Research Park. Professor Charles is returning to the UK from Australia where he was Director of the ithree institute, University of Technology, Sydney. Professor Charles has over 30 years’ experience in academic and commercial research. His academic career has included being a founding member of The Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research at University College London, one the UK’s first institutes of translational medicine. He has also worked in the pharmaceutical industry at Glaxo Wellcome, and has been founder and CSO of biotech companies in the area of infectious disease, including Arrow Therapeutics, sold to AstraZeneca, and Auspherix a venture capital backed company founded in 2013. His current research interests include infectious diseases as well as the microbiome and its impact on health and wellbeing. The new Centre for Food & Health will provide a step change for food and health research, and the translation of science by industry, to benefit society and the UK economy. The Centre will be located at the Norwich Research Park, one of Europe’s largest single-site concentrations of research in Food, Health and Environmental sciences. The multidisciplinary Centre aims to bring together the Institute of Food Research and aspects of the University of East Anglia’s Faculty of Science and the Norwich Medical School with the regional gastrointestinal endoscopy facility at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital. With a unique integration of diet, health, nutrition and medicine under one roof, linking closely to world class plant and crop research at the John Innes Centre and bioinformatics at The Genome Analysis Centre (both also located on the Norwich Research Park), it will have the potential to deliver clinically validated strategies to improve human health and wellbeing.

Professor Betsy Keller

Ithaca College, USA

Professor Keller is Professor Ithaca College, Dept. of Exercise and Sport Sciences, Ithaca, NY.
RESEARCH / CLINICAL FOCUS: Since 2003 Professor Keller has tested persons ill with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) for purposes of research and/or to provide an objective assessment of functional capacity and ability to perform and recover from physical work. Often, these individuals seek an objective indication of illness status to apply for disability benefits. A two-day exercise test protocol has shown to be instrumental in delineating abnormal responses to and recovery from exercise in ME/CFS patients. Her report of test results and interpretation has been successful in many cases to support an argument for disability coverage.
There are only a few researchers in the USA who have performed and interpreted the two-day exercise test protocol on ME/CFS patients, and therefore have observed first-hand the anomalous multisystem responses of these patients 24 hours post-exercise.
Professor Keller continues to expand the small body of peer-reviewed evidence of the abnormal recovery response to physical activity in ME/CFS so that most, if not all clinicians, researchers, health insurers and patient family members also understand the deleterious impact of this illness.
To that end, She has collaborated on an NIH R21 grant with PI, Maureen Hanson, from Cornell University to study the effects of exercise in ME/CFS on parameters of physiological and immune function.
Together they continue to analyze this data and other data collected to better understand how to help those with ME/CFS.

BRMEC5 Keynote Speaker: Professor David Brooks

Invest in ME are pleased to announce that giving a keynote speech at BMEC5 will be Professor David Brooks from Imperial College, London. Professor Brooks is Hartnett Professor of Neurology in the Department of Medicine.

Professor Brooks' research involves the use of positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging to diagnose and study the progression of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases in life and to validate imaging biomarkers for therapeutic trials.

Professor Brooks will be giving a keynote speech on Imaging Inflammation and Its Role in Neurodegeneration. This is important for understanding and evaluating the role of imaging in diagnostics and may aid researchers involved in ME-related imaging studies.

Professor David Brooks MD, DSc, FRCP, FMedSci

To date, Professor Brooks has published over 350 reports in peer reviewed journals, including Nature and has an h index of 97. His research is supported by grants from the EU FP7 programmes, UK Medical Research Council, the Alzheimer's Research Trust, Parkinson's UK, the Michael J Fox Foundation, Lundbeck Foundation, Danish Council for Independent Research, and industry. He is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the EMBL Nordic Hub at Aarhus University and is a member of the scientific advisory board of Alzheimer UK. He has been a member of the scientific advisory boards of the German Dementia and Parkinson networks, the Austrian KLIF Science Fund, the Research Advisory Panels of the UK Parkinson's Disease Society, Inserm, the Michael J. Fox Foundation (2002-2006), UK Medical Research Council Neuroscience and Mental Health Board (2004-2007), UK Huntington's Disease Association, and was Chairman of the Scientific Issues Committee of the Movement Disorder Society (1998-2002) and a Director of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism (1993-1997). He was Chairman of the Council of Management of the UK Parkinson's Disease Society 1997-8. He is an Associate Editor of Brain and on the Editorial Boards of Parkinsonism and Related Disorders, Basal Ganglia, Journal of Parkinson's Disease, Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery, Synapse, Molecular Imaging and Biology, Journal of Neurotherapeutics, and Current Trends in Neurology. He was on the editorial boards of the Journal of Neural Transmission, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry and Movement Disorders. In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science, UK. In 2002 he was invited to give the Stan Fahn Lecture at the International Congress of Movement Disorders, Miami, in 2003 the George Cotzias Lecture in Madrid, in 2004 the Charles E Wilson Lecture, the Psychobiology Institute, Jerusalem March 2004, in 2005 the Kuhl-Lassen lecture at the Society of Nuclear Medicine, Toronto, and in 2006 the Sprague lecture at UC Irvine.

Professor David Brooks Bio

Doris Jones MSc

Medical Researcher, UK

Doris Jones is an independent medical researcher who investigates the dangers of drugs, particularly those causing ME.

She has been involved in ME issues since 1989 - since her son developed ME in 1980 aged 12 1/2. She carried out a very large multifactorial study into ME for which she was awarded an MSc in 1992 and has shown the results of that study, and subsequent independently conducted studies, at various international conferences. She was also a Reference Group member to the CMO's Working Group on CFS/ME and submitted numerous documents to that group, including results of a long-term follow-up study. She have recently made two submissions to the Gibson Inquiry - most of these details are on the 25% ME group website. Subsequently she had 2 articles published on exactly these links and associations, one was published as a Second Opinion item in the What Doctors Don't Tell You newsletter, Dec.1993, the other - a much more comprehensive overview piece with many references - was published in the March 1997 issue of Yoga & Health.

In her own research she has identified another specific group (a possible subgroup) of ME/CFS patients, i.e. those who attribute the onset of ME on an exacerbation of their existing illness to the use of the antibiotic Septrin / Bactrim (generic name Cotrimoxazole).

She has performed 2 separate studies on such patients, details of which were shown at the 2 international conferences on CFS and Related Disorders in 1995 and 1999 in Brussels and elsewhere. The abstract of the first of these studies was published in the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, 1996. This particular antibiotic was severely restricted in the UK in 1995 (and in Sweden already about 10 years earlier!). She has covered this particular topic in an article published in the November 1996 issue of Yoga & Health and again the DoH, the Health Select Committee and just recently the Gibson Inquiry have been informed of these links.

She has notified the Health Select Committee of these links for some of their inquiries (and indeed much earlier in 1992 the DoH!), and just recently has submitted evidence to the Gibson Inquiry.

Doris strongly believes that the link between vaccines and some cases of ME should be properly investigated as a matter of urgency.

Dr Jonathan Kerr BSc, MBBCh, MD, PhD, FRCPath

Department of Microbiology, West Suffolk Hospital Foundation Trust, UK

Jonathan Kerr was Sir Joseph Hotung Senior Lecturer in Inflammation, St George's University of London. Jonathan Kerr qualified in medicine from Queen’s University of Belfast (1987), and completed training as a medical microbiologist (1995). He has worked as a microbiologist in Belfast, Manchester and London, taking up post as a Consultant Senior Lecturer in Microbiology at Royal Brompton Hospital / Imperial College in June 2001, and then Sir Joseph Hotung Clinical Senior Lecturer in Inflammation at St George’s University of London in 2005. His interest in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) began during a study of the consequences of parvovirus B19 infection, when he showed that a percentage of infected cases developed CFS which persisted for several years. He is now the principal investigator in a programme of research in CFS. This involves development of a diagnostic test using mass spectrometry, analysis of human and viral gene expression in the white blood cells, and clinical trials of immunomodulatory drugs. Dr. Jonathan Kerr and colleagues at St. George’s University of London reported in the July 27, 2005 issue of the Journal of Clinical Pathology that a preliminary study of 25 CFS patients and 25 matched healthy controls revealed abnormalities in 35 of 9,522 genes analyzed using microarray technology. Polymerase chain reaction studies showed the same results for 16 of these genes. The study, and its results, raises some important questions. The first of which pertains to the need for funding of microbiological CFS research. He leads a group of 5 scientists at St George's. His research on gene expression has resulted in several published papers – including evidence of 7 distinct sub types of ME/CFS. Dr. Kerr also runs a ME/CFS research program. He studied the consequences of parvovirus B19 infection in ME/CFS and showed that a percentage of infected cases developed ME/CFS which persisted for several years. He has reported 88 human genes whose dysregulation is associated with CFS, and which can be used to derive genomic CFS subtypes which have marked differences in clinical phenotype and severity.

Dr Elizabeth Unger

Chief of Chronic Viral Diseases Branch, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Elizabeth (Beth) Unger, PhD, MD, received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry at Lebanon Valley College, Annville, PA. She then earned her PhD and MD in the Division of Biologic Sciences at the University of Chicago where she also began a residency in pathology. Her residency and fellowship was completed at Pennsylvania State University Medical Center. During this time, Dr. Unger developed a practical method of colorimetic in situ hybridization. This work led to interest in tissue localization of HPV and ultimately to her initial appointment to CDC in 1997 to pursue molecular pathology of HPV and CFS.

Dr. Unger has served as the Acting Chief of CVDB since January 2010 and has 13 years of experience in CVDB, where she has participated in the design and implementation of CFS research and HPV laboratory diagnostics. During this time, she was co-author on 25 peer-reviewed manuscripts related to CFS, including the often-cited descriptions of the Wichita and Georgia population-based studies. In addition, Dr. Unger has been instrumental in efforts by WHO to establish an HPV LabNet and serves as lead of a WHO HPV Global Reference Laboratory. She is co-author of 142 peer-reviewed publications and 24 book chapters and serves on the editorial board of six scientific journals. In 2008, for her HPV research accomplishments, she received the Health and Human Services (HHS) Career Achievement Award.

Dr Unger has been selected to serve as the Chief of the Chronic Viral Diseases Branch (CVDB) in the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology (DHCPP), National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Professor Theoharis C. Theoharides, BA, MS, MPhil, PhD, MD, FAAAAI

Professor of Pharmacology and Internal Medicine, Tufts University, Boston, USA

Theoharis Theoharides is Professor of Pharmacology and Internal Medicine, as well as Director of Molecular Immunopharmacology and Drug Discovery, in the Department of Immunology at Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA.
He was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, and graduated with Honors from Anatolia College. He received all his degrees with Honors from Yale University, and was awarded the Dean’s Research Award and the Winternitz Prize in Pathology.

He trained in internal medicine at New England Medical Center, which awarded him the Oliver Smith Award “recognizing excellence, compassion and service.” He also received a Certificate in Global Leadership from the Tufts Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a Fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He has been serving as the Clinical Pharmacologist of the Massachusetts Drug Formulary Commission continuously since 1986. In Greece, he has served on the Supreme Advisory Health Councils of the Ministries of Health and of Social Welfare, as well as on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Technology, and he is a member of the International Advisory Committee for the University of Cyprus School of Medicine. He first showed that mast cells, known for causing allergic reactions, are critical for inflammation, especially in the brain, and are involved in a number of inflammatory conditions that worsen by stress such as allergies, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, eczema, fibromyalgia, migraines, mastocytosis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and most recently autism spectrum disorder.

He has also shown that corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), neurotensin and substance P, peptides secreted under stress, act together, and with the cytokine IL-33, to trigger mast cells and microglia to secrete inflammatory molecules. These processes are inhibited by the novel flavonoids, luteolin and tetramethoxyluteolin that he has helped formulate in unique dietary supplements and a skin lotion. He has published over 400 scientific papers (JBC, JACI, JPET, NEJM, Nature, PNAS, Science) and 3 textbooks with 29,887 citations (h-factor 84) and he is in the top 5% of authors most cited in pharmacological and immunological journals. He has received 37 patents and trademarks, including three patents covering the use of luteolin in brain inflammation and autism: US 8,268,365 (09/18/12); US 9,050,275 (06/09/15); US 9,176,146 (11/03/15).

Acting as Advisor, he was instrumental in the development of ibuprofen (Upjohn), Cetirizine (UCB) and Niaspan (Kos). He is also the Scientific Director of Algonot, LLC, as well as President of Theta Biomedical Consulting and Development Co., Inc., of BiomedAdvice, LLC, and of the nonprofit Brain-Gain.org. He is a member of 15 academies and scientific societies. He was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha National Medical Honor Society and the Rare Diseases Hall of Fame. At Tufts, he served on the Curriculum, Students Promotion, Grievance, Faculty Promotion and Tenure, as well as Strategic Planning Committees. He received the Tufts Excellence in Teaching ten times, the Tufts Distinguished Faculty Recognition Award twice, the Tufts Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence, Boston Mayor’s Community Award, and the Dr. George Papanicolau Award, as well as Honorary Doctor of Medicine from Athens University and Honorary Doctor of Sciences from Hellenic-American University. He is “Archon” of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Dr Avindra Nath MD

NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

Dr. Nath received his MD degree from Christian Medical College in India in 1981 and completed a residency in Neurology from University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, followed by a fellowship in Multiple Sclerosis and Neurovirology at the same institution and then a fellowship in Neuro-AIDS at NINDS.

He held faculty positions at the University of Manitoba (1990-97) and the University of Kentucky (1997-02).

In 2002, he joined Johns Hopkins University as Professor of Neurology and Director of the Division of Neuroimmunology and Neurological Infections.

He joined NIH in 2011 as the Clinical Director of NINDS, the Director of the Translational Neuroscience Center and Chief of the Section of Infections of the Nervous System.

His research focuses on understanding the pathophysiology of retroviral infections of the nervous system and the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for these diseases.

Professor Markku Partinen, MD, PhD

University of Helsinki, Finland

Prof Markku Partinen is a neurologist and an internationally well-known opinion leader and expert in sleep research and sleep medicine.

Professor Markku Partinen is currently Director of the Helsinki Sleep Clinic, Vitalmed Research Centre, and Principal Investigator of Sleep Research at Institute of Clinical Medicine, Clinicum, University of Helsinki, Finland.

He has been the coordinator of the NARPANord Narcolepsy Consortium.
He became interested in sleep research while studying medicine at the University of Montpellier, France.
He obtained his medical degree (DrMed) from Montpellier in 1976 (Supervisor Prof Pierre Passouant).
He received his PhD in 1982 (epidemiology of sleep disorders), and degree of a specialist in neurology in 1982, in Helsinki, Finland.
He has worked as a postdoc researcher at Stanford University, USA in 1985-86 and in Bologna, Italy in 1987.
In addition, he has had several shorter visits as visiting researcher or visiting Professor at different Universities in Europe.
His main interests in sleep medicine have been narcolepsy, excessive daytime sleepiness and fatigue (including ME), sleep apnea, and parasomnias.
He has published more than 330 original articles in peer reviewed Journals in addition to writing many book Chapters and editing several books.
His Hirsch factor (H-factor) is 59 in ISI Web of Sciences and 64 in Scopus.
He has served in the Editorial Boards and as Assistant Editor in Sleep, Journal of Sleep Research and Sleep Medicine.
He has had many International positions in different research societies including Member of the Scientific Board and Vice-President of the European Sleep Research Society (ESRS), President of the Scandinavian Sleep Research Society, President Elect and President of the World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM), Coordinating Secretary of the World Federation of Sleep Research Societies (WFSRS) and President and Member of the Board of the Scandinavian Sleep Research Society.
He has been President of the ESRS congress in 1992 (Helsinki), the World Congress of Sleep Apnea in 2003 (Helsinki), and the WASM congress in 2007 (Bangkok).
In addition, he has organized several smaller meetings and symposia in the field of narcolepsy, RBD and different sleep disorders.
Currently he is a Member of the Board in the ESRS EU-Narcolepsy Network (EU-NN) and Chair of Scientific Board of the EU-NN, President of the Finnish Parkinson Association and President of the Finnish Sleep Research Society.
He has published more than 250 articles in peer-reviewed international journals, several books and chapters.

Dr Lesley Hoyles

Imperial College, London, UK

Dr Lesley Hoyles is a microbiologist and computational biologist, and an MRC Intermediate Research Fellow in Data Science (UK Med-Bio). The early years of her career focussed on the isolation and phenotypic characterization of novel anaerobic Actinobacteria. Her PhD studies at the University of Reading introduced Dr Hoyles to the gut microbiota, and led her to develop an interest in integrating various -omics and traditional approaches to look at microbe–host interactions and co-metabolism. After completing a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship in Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET scheme) at University College Cork to develop improved methods for the isolation and characterization of gut-associated bacteriophages, Dr Hoyles was awarded an MRC Advanced Scholarship to undertake an MSc in Bioinformatics with Theoretical Systems Biology at Imperial College London.

Subsequently, Dr Hoyles has worked in the field of translational systems biology at Imperial College London, using her unique skill set to investigate host–microbiome interactions and co-metabolism in humans, and animal and in vitro models.

In addition to her research interests, Dr Hoyles teaches on the MRes Biomedical Research stream Microbiome in Health and Disease. She is heavily involved in outreach activities, running Bugs In Your Guts and an after-school science club, and volunteering at the Turing House CoderDojo. Dr Hoyles is a STEM Ambassador and an Academic Editor for PeerJ.

Anne Cooke, FMedSci, FRSB

Emeritus Professor of Immunobiology Anne Cooke, University of Cambridge, UK

Anne Cooke began her academic career as a postdoctoral fellow. From 1970 to 1972, she held a SRC postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Sussex. From 1972 to 1973, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois and worked at the Medical Center, Chicago, USA. From 1973 to 1978, she held a Arthritis Research UK postdoctoral research fellowship in the Immunology Department of Middlesex Hospital. Then from 1978 to 1981, while remaining at Middlesex Hospital, she was a Wellcome Trust senior research fellow.

In 1981, she moved from research into teaching and research. From 1981 to 1988, she was a Wellcome Trust senior lecturer within the immunology division of the UCL Medical School and also at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School. From 1988 to 1990, she was Reader in Experimental Immunology at University College London.

In 1990, Anne moved to the University of Cambridge. From 1990 to 1996, she was a lecturer in the Department of Pathology. In 1992, she was elected a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. From 1996 to 2000, she was Reader in Immunology. In 1999, she was a visiting professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. On 1 October 2000, she was granted a personal chair and appointed Professor of Immunobiology. In 2013, she retired from full-time academia; she was appointed Professor Emeritus and made an Emeritus Fellow of King's College.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Cooke

BSc (Hons) Biochemistry, University of Glasgow
DPhil Biochemistry, University of Sussex.
SRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dept Biochemistry, U. Sussex.
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Illinois at the Medical Center, Chicago,USA.
ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Immunology Department, Middlesex Hospital Medical School.
Honorary Lecturer, Dept Biochemistry, St Mary's Hospital Medical School.
Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, Immunology Department, Middlesex Hospital Medical School.
Wellcome Trust Senior Lecturer, Immunology Division, University College and Middlesex Schools of Medicine.
Reader in Experimental Immunology University College, London
Lecturer, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge.
Reader in Immunology, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge.
Professor of Immunobiology, Department of Pathology, University of Cambridge.
Honorary Fellow, University College, London.
Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences
Honorary Degree University of Copenhagen

Associate Professor Petter Brodin MD PhD

Associate Professor
SciLifeLab, Department of Women’s and Children’s health , Karolinska Institutet
Department Newborn Medicine , Karolinska University Hospital
Sweden

Associate Professor Petter Brodin's team at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden - is aiming to understand human immune system variation in health and disease, and understand the factors that shape human immune systems.

Other interests are in defining better metrics of immune system health and develoingp methods for better immune system analyses in human patients.

As a physician at the department of pediatrics at the Karolinska University Hospital, he has a particular interest in understanding when and how human immune systems are shaped early in life, and the influences by environmental exposures such as the microbiome, infections, vaccines, nutritional components etc in this process.

His team is firmly convinced that the way to understand human immune systems and their variation, is to analyse all system components simultaneously and relathionships between these taken into account.
This have recently been made possible with the development of novel high-dimensional methods operating at single-cell resolution, such as Mass cytometry and scRNA-seq.

To analyze human immune systems at the systems-level, his team is developing novel experimental methods and algorithms for analyses.

Dr Ron Tompkins MD, ScD

Director of the Center for Surgery, Science and Bioengineering, Massachusetts General Hospital

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

Ronald G. Tompkins, MD, ScD, is the Sumner M. Redstone Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Founding Director of the Center for Surgery, Science & Bioengineering at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Chief of Staff Emeritus at Shriners Hospitals for Children―Boston.

The Center, a division of Surgery at Mass General, is a newly established center for research and innovation based upon the Mass General Burns Division’s collaborative track record and expertise in securing more than $200 million in federal, foundation, and industrial support for basic research and clinical programs.

It is a clinically-driven enterprise that engages in the basic sciences and engineering to solve everyday challenges in clinical medicine. The center promotes the development of new approaches to healthcare delivery and personalized medicine, minimally invasive therapies, as well as a myriad of new technologies such as re-engineered organs, smart nano-pharmaceuticals and nano-diagnostics, and living cell-based microfabricated devices for diagnostics, therapeutics, high-throughput drug screening, and basic and applied biomedical investigation.

He is a board-certified general surgeon with a doctorate in chemical engineering, which provides him with expertise not only in the clinical evaluation of critical care patients, but also in inflammation biology, genomics, proteomics, and computational biology.

Elected as a Director of the American Board of Surgery in 1994, he has received multiple honors including a fellowship from the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and an honorary M.A. from Harvard University. He has served as an officer including as President and Board Member of more than a dozen national and international academic societies. RESEARCH SUMMARY

Dr. Tompkins has published more than 450 research papers in medicine and engineering journals and has contributed to the advancement of science and engineering through service on institutional advisory panels, moderating mini-symposia and workshops on biotechnology, and studying the genomics and proteomics of immunology and metabolism resulting from injury.

Together with his Division colleagues, nearly 300 fellows have been mentored in the Division’s training programs with many excellent success stories.

Dr Michael VanElzakker

Neuroscientist, Massachusetts General Hospital/Tufts University, USA

Biography

Dr. VanElzakker received a master's degree in behavioral neuroscience at the University of Colorado, working in Dr. Robert Spencer's neuroendocrinology laboratory, and a PhD in experimental clinical psychology at Tufts University, working in Dr. Lisa Shin's psychopathology neuroimaging laboratory. His postdoctoral fellowship is at Massachusetts General Hospital/ Harvard Medical School, at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, in the Division of Neurotherapeutics.

Dr. VanElzakker is interested in uncovering the mechanisms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and of myalgic encephalomyelitis - also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

His PTSD research uses functional and structural brain imaging, behavioral attention tasks, blood, and genetic data to investigate what makes some individuals vulnerable to PTSD following trauma. He is interested in using non-invasive electroceutical medical devices to enhance safety learning, which may eventually serve as an adjunct to enhance exposure-based therapy for PTSD.

His ME/CFS research uses functional and structural brain imaging to look for abnormal patterns in brain metabolism and inflammation in this patient population. This research focuses on dysfunction at the intersection of the nervous and immune systems and posits that ME/CFS may be what happens when the nervous system detects an exaggerated and ongoing innate immune response. He is interested in using non-invasive electroceutical medical devices to enhance the anti-inflammatory vagus nerve reflex.

From The Center for Surgery, Innovation & Bioengineering

Simon McArthur

Queen Mary, University of London, UK

Simon McArthur - Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience & Pharmacology Clinical
Queen Mary, University of London
1997-2000 - University of Cambridge, BA Hons in Natural Sciences
2000-2004 - Imperial College London, PhD in Pharmacology - Effects of steroid hormones upon mesencephalic dopaminergic nuclei in rodents: adult neuroprotection & perinatal programming
2004-2011 - Research Associate, Department of Cellular & Molecular Neuroscience, Imperial College London
2011-2014 - Postdoctoral Research Fellow, William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary, University of London
2014-2016 - Lecturer in Physiology, Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Westminster
2016-present - Non-Clinical Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience & Pharmacology, Institute of Dentistry, Queen Mary, University of London
His research concentrates on Alzheimer’s disease and developing an understanding of how the factors that are known to increase risk of its development are actually mediated.
He is particularly interested in how changes in peripheral homeostasis affect the main defensive structures of the brain, the blood brain barrier (BBB) and the microglia, and the implications these may have for the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
His group focuses on the so-called gut-brain axis, and communication between the human gut microbiota and the BBB, where they have shown several different microbe-derived metabolites to regulate BBB integrity and function in vitro and in vivo.
A major arm of this work now focuses on investigating how dietary modification of the gut microbiota can influence neuroinflammatory disease, with a view to identifying nutritional mechanisms to promote brain resilience in the face of neurodegenerative challenge.
This work is generously funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK.
A second focus of his research is into the mechanisms of inflammatory resolution, focusing particularly on the role of the protein annexin A1 and its primary receptor FPR2. They have shown that annexin A1 acting through FPR2 is a major chemoattractant for infiltrating monocytes, and that it promotes their differentiation into pro-resolving macrophages, a key step in the healthy and regulated termination of an inflammatory reaction.
His group is now investigating the role of FPR2 in microglia, given their close relationship to macrophages, focussing on whether agonists for this receptor may have value as an approach to limit neuroinflammatory activity in Alzheimer’s disease.
https://www.qmul.ac.uk/dentistry/people/profiles/simonmcarthur.html

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