Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy

Mel Berger is a Senior Director, Medical Research Strategy at CSL and Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics and Pathology, Case Western Reserve University. He earned his undergraduate, medical and PhD (in Biochemistry) degrees at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He completed his internship and residency in pediatrics at Boston ChildrenÔÇÖs Hospital. He did an allergy-clinical immunology fellowship at NIH, and is Board Certified in Pediatrics and Allergy-Immunology. He served as Assistant Chief of Allergy-Immunology at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and had an initial faculty appointment at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.

In 1984, he returned to Cleveland and joined the faculty of Case Western Reserve as Chief of the Division of Allergy-Immunology at Rainbow, Babies and ChildrenÔÇÖs Hospital and he rose to Professor of Pediatrics, Pathology and General Medical Sciences (Oncology). In 2008, Dr. Berger joined CSL Behring, but he continues to hold a faculty appointment at Case. He served for more than 20 years in the US Army and Army Reserve, including commanding a hospital unit during the peace effort in former Yugoslavia, and retired from the Army as a Colonel.

Dr. Berger's research has focused on control of inflammatory responses and on antigen-antibody and complement interactions, particularly in primary immune deficiency diseases and cystic fibrosis. He has been a leader in research on the clinical use of immunoglobulins and played a key role in developing the use of portable pumps to give IgG subcutaneously. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers on his research, as well as numerous chapters and review articles.

Dr. Berger is a Fellow of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology, the American Pediatric Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. He has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Society for Pediatric Research, and has served as a Director of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology and on numerous FDA and NIH panels.

Peter D. Donofrio, M.D. is a Professor of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is a graduate of The Ohio State University School of Medicine and pursued a residency in neurology and a neuromuscular fellowship at the University of Michigan. Dr. Donofrio is board certified in Neurology, Internal Medicine, EMG and Neuromuscular Disorders. He is Chief of the Neuromuscular Section and Director of the EMG lab at Vanderbilt.

Other duties include Directorship of the MDA Clinic and the ALS Clinic. He is a member of the Medical Advisory Committee of the GBS/CIDP International Foundation; Vanderbilt University Medical Center is a certified Center of Excellence for the GBS/CIDP International Foundation. Dr. Donofrio has a special interest in all types of peripheral neuropathies, particularly GBS and CIDP, but also cares for many patients with myasthenia gravis, ALS, and muscle disorders. He is the author of the textbook entitled The Textbook of Peripheral Neuropathy published in April 2012 by Demos Medical.

Richard A. Lewis, MD is Professor of Neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California where he directs the EMG laboratory and co-directs the neuromuscular clinical program. He is Director of the GBS-CIDP Foundation Center of Excellence at Cedars-Sinai. Prior to his move to California in 2013, he was Associate Chair of Neurology at Wayne State University where he had been for 19 years.

He has been on the Board of Directors of the Peripheral Nerve Society, and on the Steering Committee of the Inflammatory Neuropathy Consortium. He is on the Medical Advisory Boards of the GBS-CIDP Foundation and the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation. He has been involved as an investigator, steering committee member and DSMB member in clinical trials in a number of immune mediated disorders including CIDP, myasthenia gravis and multifocal motor neuropathy.

Nabil Moumane is the Director of Medical Affairs and Pharmacology at CSL Behring. He completed his medical training at the University of Casablanca in Morocco. He also has a Master of Biomedical and Physical Engineering of Health in the University of Saints-Pères, Paris, and Biostatistics for the Health and Biological Sciences in Pierre at Marie Curie University in Paris. Before joining the pharmaceutical industry he spent 3 years in Emergency department. He gained over 10 years of industry experience in Medical Affairs departments first in central nervous system and psychiatry and then, from 2010 he joined CSL Behring as a medical manager in immunology.