EHDN & Enroll-HD Strasbourg 2024: An Interview with Åsa Petersén and Sandrine Humbert

Highlight from the: EHDN-NL-50-Nov2023

EHDN & Enroll-HD 2024 will be a collaborative event combining the biennial EHDN Plenary Meeting and the Enroll-HD Congress over three days (12–14 September 2024) in Strasbourg, France. We spoke with programme chairs Åsa Petersén (Lund University, Sweden) and Sandrine Humbert (Paris Brain Institute, France) to find out more about the exciting plans afoot.

When did planning start?
Åsa: We started to plan actively in January 2023. As chairs of the programme of the meeting, Sandrine and I first needed to think about the programme committee, which was formed in April. Since then, we’ve had regular meetings with the programme committee, which comprises scientists and clinicians from different parts of Europe and much further afield. We also have a representative from the HD advocacy community.

Sandrine: This is going to be the first joint meeting between the EHDN and Enroll-HD, so the format will be slightly different from previous years in that one whole day (Saturday) will be dedicated specifically to Enroll-HD. As such, we are expecting a record turnout in 2024!

Åsa: We see this as a unique opportunity to bring our HD community together in Europe – clinicians, health-care professionals, scientists and families, who together, as a community, represent many different countries and perspectives.

Exciting! What can you share now about the programme?
Åsa: An important topic, and one that everyone is interested in, will be the update of ongoing and planned clinical trials. We will ensure that perspectives are shared by HD families, researchers and clinicians. Our main keynote speakers are leaders in the HD field, and we will also have sessions for more junior researchers to present their research, including poster presentations. Research themes will focus on genetic modifiers, somatic expansion, developmental and ageing aspects, and metabolic aspects of HD and related disorders. When it comes to clinical aspects, we will cover both the global impact of HD and this year, we’ll focus on cognitive symptoms and rehabilitation as well as palliative care.

Sandrine: While the topics for 2024 are [not all] new, and we will have new speakers bringing fresh perspectives alongside our well-known speakers, the key ethos of interaction between researchers, clinicians and family members will remain. We can say now that our keynote speakers will include Jean-Louis Mandel (University of Strasbourg) – one of the first researchers to identify a disease-causing triplet repeat expansion in a gene. Sarah Tabrizi (University College London) is a leading HD clinician-scientist who will be speaking, and Harry Orr (University of Minnesota), who (together with Huda Zoghbi) cloned the gene for spinocerebellar ataxia 1 (SCA1, another triplet repeat disorder), will be joining us.

What social events can we look forward to?
Sandrine: There is lots to look forward to! In addition to a special event by HDBuzz, we will have several opportunities for networking and interaction.

We should mention as well that Strasbourg is a truly beautiful city, and well worth visiting. It’s going to be great!

Åsa: Yes, we are really looking forward to it. We have been overwhelmed by the hugely positive responses from all the speakers and chairs we have spoken to, and of course, the dedication and enthusiasm of the EHDN staff, who are working incredibly hard to put everything in place for the meeting to be a tremendous success.

 

The full programme and calls for registration and abstract submission will be announced in early 2024. If you have any questions about the congress, please email strasbourg2024@euro-hd.net.