The Multiple Sclerosis International Federation's Charcot Award 2000-2001, for lifetime achievement in outstanding research into the understanding or treatment of multiple sclerosis, was presented to Professor Hartmut Wekerle.

Professor Hartmut Wekerle

Professor Wekerle is one of the world's leading experimental neuroimmunologists. He has made an overwhelming number of contributions to science that have not only provided a better understanding but have literally shaped our concepts of the immunopathogenesis of inflammatory CNS diseases. His scientific work is outstanding for its creativity, originality, and continuing productivity.

T cell culture techniques

Professor Wekerle was one of the first people to isolate autoantigen-specific T-cell lines, that is to say he was able to cultivate and grow immune cells which are directed against specific target cells in the central nervous system. When T cell culture techniques were still in their infancy and available in only a few laboratories in the world, Hartmut Wekerle - together with Avi Ben Nun and Irun Cohen - showed that purified myelin basic protein-specific T cells are sufficient to induce experimental allergic encephalomyelitis - an animal model for MS.

This made possible the induction of an experimental disease similar to MS in certain animals by injecting immune cells which are directed against a component of myelin. This is perhaps the single most important breakthrough that has subsequently influenced all concepts of MS pathogenesis and therapy.

Recent work

More recently, Hartmut Wekerle and colleagues investigated the expression of immune molecules like MHC class I antigens in neurons, and demonstrated that the expression of MHC (a prerequisite for interaction with immune cells) is regulated by the electric activity of the neurons. One of his most recent achievements is the successful transduction of encephalitogenic T cells with the green fluorescent protein (GFP). This will allow the direct visualisation of encephalitogenic T cells in CNS tissue, opening up a whole new perspective for research into the migration and activation pathways of encephalitogenic T cells in vivo.

The Charcot Lecture

Professor Wekerle was invited to give the Charcot Lecture at the October 2001 biennial conference of the MSIF in Melbourne, Australia, and also at the September meeting of the European Committee of Treatment and Research in MS (ECTRIMS) in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. The International Medical and Scientific Board was delighted to have the opportunity to acknowledge the outstanding work of Professor Wekerle.

Prof. Dr. med. Jürg Kesselring
Chair, International Medical and Scientific Board