Center for Enervating NeuroImmune Disease
Organized by the Community Advisory Committee of the NIH ME/CFS Centers Network, Hanson’s overview of the ENID Center is followed by a panel discussion led by Susan Taylor-Brown, a patient advocate for our Center and member of the Network’s Community Advisory Committee. Andrew Grimson (single cell transcriptomics lead), Jessica Maya (immune cell metabolism investigator), and Ludovic Giloteaux (extracellular vesicles investigator) join Hanson and Taylor-Brown for a discussion of our research. Topics such as immune dysfunction, extracellular vesicles, and gene expression are covered in this video.
Category: Outreach
Hanson speaks at MassME 2021 Annual Meeting
The Massachusetts ME/CFS & FM Association held their annual meeting on Oct. 23, 2021. The meeting’s title, Advances in Our Understanding of ME/CFS and the Effects of Long COVID, highlights the theme of this event. Dr. Maureen Hanson, Center Director, was invited to speak at this meeting. Hanson’s talk provided a summary of ongoing work at the ENID Center. Mass ME/CFS & FM has uploaded the talks from this meeting to YouTube. You can watch Hanson’s full talk below, and the complete playlist of all talks from the meeting can be found here.
Hanson and Keller present talks at an interdisciplinary fatigue workshop
Maureen Hanson, Center Director, and Betsy Keller, Clinical Core Co-lead, presented at the Beyond the Symptoms: The Biology of Fatigue workshop. The workshop was co-sponsored by the NIH Neuroscience Blueprint Research Program and Sleep Research Society, and it took place on September 27-28, 2021. Hanson provide insight into fatigue from the perspective of immune dysfunction in ME/CFS. Keller drew from her experience in exercise physiology to elaborate on post-exertional malaise in ME/CFS.
Detailed meeting information including the agenda can be found on the event website. Recordings of the meeting are freely available on NIH VideoCast for Day 1 and Day 2, separately.
Altered T cell metabolism and dysregulated cytokine associations in ME/CFS
The ENID Center is excited to announce a new publication in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Recent Hanson Lab graduate, Dr. Alexandra Mandarano, is the lead author of “Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome patients exhibit altered T cell metabolism and cytokine associations”. This paper goes into our research exploring the immune system in people with ME/CFS.
UPDATE: The final publication of the paper was released on February 10, 2020. Accompanying this release, Dr. Mady Hornig wrote a related commentary: “Can the light of immunometabolism cut through “brain fog”?“.
Dr. Daniel Peterson and Simmaron Research staff Dr. Gunnar Gottschalk and Marco Maynard provided blood samples from carefully diagnosed ME/CFS cases and controls that were critical for carrying out the study. Thanks to Simmaron Research and a private donor, as well as NIH, for financial support for the study. A press release was issued by NIH.
Furthermore, we have launched a new initiative to help expand the reach of our research. Dr. Mandarano has recorded a talk that walks you through this publication. The video is hosted on our new YouTube channel. Check out this video below and stay tuned for future posts and videos about our research.
Betsy Keller speaks in Norway November 2019
As part of the Norwegian ME Association’s Knowledge Campaign 2019, Dr. Betsy Keller traveled to Norway to present on post-exertional malaise. The Norwegian ME Association has uploaded her talk to YouTube and can be watched using the embedded video below. Additionally, the following links will direct you to associated information translated to English via Google Translate.
Norwegian ME Association’s Knowledge Campaign 2019
Post about Dr. Keller’s talk including information on PEM management
Third annual OMF community symposium
The Third Annual Community Symposium on the Molecular Basis of ME/CFS followed the Open Medicine Foundation working group meeting at Stanford University on September 7th, 2019. Keynote speaker, Dr. Maureen Hanson, started her talk discussing data on metabolomics, immune cells, extracellular vesicles, and RNA gene expression. The second portion of her talk went into her thoughts on the disease. OMF has uploaded her talk to YouTube, which can be found here.
Workwell Foundation releases continuing education on ME/CFS
Our collaborators at the Workwell Foundation have put together a two-part continuing education course on ME/CFS developed for PTs, OTs, nurses, and ATCs. Part 1 covers the introduction and identification of ME/CFS and Part 2 goes into etiology and analeptic management. The content is available through MedBridge.
Inaugural Harvard ME/CFS collaboration symposium
Dr. Maureen Hanson participated in the inaugural Harvard ME/CFS Collaboration 2019 Scientific and Public Symposium sponsored by the Open Medicine Foundation that was held in Boston, MA on June 6-7, 2019. On June 6 she presented a talk on ongoing research in the NIH-funded Cornell ME/CFS U54 Center. She also presented on June 7 at the public symposium held in a theater in nearby Somerville, MA. The talks from the public symposium have been made available by OMF. Dr. Hanson’s talk is below and the full list of talks can be found here.
InvestinME Research Events
InvestinME Research hosted a series of events in London with the purpose of promoting better education about ME/CFS and increasing international collaboration on ME/CFS research. The series began with the Thinking the Future Young/ECR conference on May 28th, 2019, for which Hanson lab graduate student Alexandra Mandarano received a travel scholarship to attend. Dr. Maureen Hanson attended and presented at the ninth Biomedical Research into ME Colloquium and at the public 14th Invest in ME Research Conference on May 31st.
UPDATE: Presentations and the conference report from the 14th Invest in ME Research International ME Conference are now available. Dr. Maureen Hanson‘s talk is among those uploaded and is included below. The full report is available on the InvestinME website here.
Exertion intolerance: What is the evidence telling us?
Clinical core co-director Dr. Betsy Keller presented on the second day of the NIH Accelerating Research on ME/CFS meeting. Dr. Keller outlined exertion intolerance in ME/CFS drawing upon her years of experience in the field. Her talk includes some preliminary data being generated from our NIH-funded Center. Dr. Keller’s complete talk can be viewed below.