Anders Svenningsson

Anders Svenningsson

Professor/Senior Physician
Visiting address: Entrévägen 2, 18257 Danderyd
Postal address: D1 Kliniska vetenskaper, Danderyds sjukhus, D1 Neurologi Neuroinflammation, 171 77 Stockholm
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About me

  • I hold a shared position as Professor of Neurology with a focus on neuroinflammatory conditions at the Department of Clinical Sciences at KIDS and senior physician and consultant neurologist at the Department of Neurology at Danderyd Hospital. I have been working with virtually all aspects of MS research for more than 35 years, but always with the aim of seeing a short way from research to patient benefit. I see all kinds of neuroinflammatory conditions in my clinical practice, with multiple sclerosis (MS) being the largest group. I believe that all successful clinical research has to have its basis in excellent clinical care, both medically and humanistically. By following every patient meticulously, we believe that we have the greatest chance to detect which areas of greatest clinical importance need to be subjects for future research

Research

  • Over the past 15 years, I have focused extensively on evaluating the clinical benefits of rituximab in MS. Rituximab is considered 'off-label' for MS, meaning that no pharmaceutical company has chosen to apply for its use in MS. This is not because it is not an effective drug, but because it is an older (and well-established) medication, making it difficult to charge a high price for it. The same pharmaceutical company that developed rituximab has in fact developed a copy of rituximab that is now priced at 100 times the cost of rituximab according to Swedish treatment protocols. Therefore, I and several other neurologists and researchers in Sweden have conducted a large number of studies to carefully map the efficacy and safety of rituximab in various clinical studies.

    Among my larger projects, I have conducted two Swedish phase 3 multicenter studies with rituximab for relapsing MS:

    RIFUND-MS: In this study, we randomized early-phase patients between dimethyl fumarate (DMF), a registered drug for MS, and rituximab. The study showed that rituximab reduced the risk of relapses over a two-year period by 80%, and patients were more satisfied with the treatment. The study was published in Lancet Neurology in 2022 and has received significant international attention.

    RIDOSE-MS: This study was partially a follow-up to RIFUND and demonstrated that the dosing interval of rituximab could be extended from 6 months to 12 months without affecting efficacy. This study has also gained international recognition.

    In recent years, my focus has shifted from primarily describing the effects of rituximab to improving the safety of the treatment. Individuals receiving rituximab for extended periods are at risk of developing immunoglobulin deficiencies and increased incidence of infections. We currently have several projects aimed at identifying risk factors for these complications that can be applied in clinical practice, as well as developing treatment protocols that minimize risks while preserving the high efficacy on inflammatory activity in MS

Teaching

  • Teaching is an important part of being both a physician and a researcher. I see medicine as a classic 'apprenticeship profession, ' but with a significant element of self-directed learning as well. As a senior physician, one of my most important tasks is to convey my experience to younger colleagues who are learning the craft of being a doctor. I have mentored a large number of residents to become fully qualified specialists.

    I am responsible for teaching medical students during the neurology course who are doing clinical placements at our clinic. This includes both supervising the clinical clerkship with us and providing direct mentorship at our outpatient clinic. I also give lectures during various parts of the medical education.

    Since 2019, I have been running the only course on MS and demyelinating diseases in the CNS offered for neurology residents. It is an intensive one-week course that covers essentially all aspects of these diseases needed to manage these patient groups clinically.

    As a researcher, I have supervised PhD students for nearly 20 years. I am currently the main supervisor for four PhD students and a co-supervisor for three.

Articles

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Selected grants

Grants

  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2025 - 31 December 2028
    Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating disease mainly affecting young people and women. The cause of MS is largely unknown, and there are no biomarkers for diagnosing MS early, known risk factors provide no information regarding the severity/progression of MS, and the pathophysiology of MS remains poorly understood. To overcome these shortcomings, we will develop an AI-assisted diagnostic approach using clinical information from the electronic health record data (EHR) from MS patients in Sweden. To address significant shortcomings of AI classifiers to include uncertainty in a given prediction, we will produce a methodology that enables a measure of confidence in each prediction. To enable early disese prediction (forecasting), we will incorporate novel metabolic, lipidomic, and proteomic diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. This project capitalizes on well-defined case-control cohorts (&gt
    7,600 individuals), including a wealth of clinical, genetic, and environmental factors, two clinical trials in MS, collected in-depth metabolic and lipidomics data, and the developments in machine learning and AI methods and that have made it feasible to manage, process and interpret complex data.This project will be instrumental in realizing precision medicine in MS, with diagnostic uncertainty, thus enabling tailored interventions to the individual patient.
  • Immunological complications in patients with multiple sclerosis treated with the monoclonal antibody rituximab
    ALF Medicine Region Stockholm
    1 January 2024 - 31 December 2026
  • Safety and efficacy of long-term treatment with rituximab in Multiple Sclerosis
    ALF Medicine Stockholm Region
    1 January 2020 - 31 December 2023
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2018 - 31 December 2020

Employments

  • Professor/Senior Physician, Department of Clinical Sciences, Danderyd Hospital, Karolinska Institutet, 2023-

Degrees and Education

  • Docent, Karolinska Institutet, 2001

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