Prof. Joep Killestein

speaker biog

Prof. Joep Killestein

Joep Killestein is a professor of Neurology / Multiple Sclerosis at Amsterdam UMC and MS Center Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

His research focuses on a) developing dedicated clinical intervention protocols aimed at individual MS patients, including therapeutic drug monitoring and tailored start, switch and stopping strategies b) biomarkers to predict and monitor disease activity, progression and response to disease modifying therapy and c) biomarkers to predict and monitor adverse effects in MS.

He has (co-)authored over 250 papers in high-ranking peer-reviewed journals, mainly focusing on drug interventions, the correlation between biomarkers, MS disease activity, disease progression and response to therapy. Also targeting adverse events and comorbidities, such as progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy and COVID-19 in MS patients.

Joep Killestein is the director of MS Center Amsterdam and co-program leader of the research program ‘Neuroinfection and -inflammation’ of Amsterdam Neuroscience. He is a member of several trial steering committees and the scientific advisory board of the MS Research foundation (Stichting MS Research). He serves on the editorial board of Neurology (the official journal of the American Academy of Neurology) and MS Journal, and is former chair of the editorial board of the scientific journal of the Netherlands Society of Neurology (Tijdschrift voor Neurologie en Neurochirurgie, TNN). Recently he joined the International Advisory Committee on Clinical Trials in Multiple Sclerosis, initiated by the US National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS) and supported jointly by the Society and the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS).