STATHOPOULOS PANOS
Panos Stathopoulos studied medicine at the University of Athens after succeeding in pan-hellenic examinations. He completed his medical studies in 2002 with the grade 7.51 out of 10 and went on to graduate studies in the Department of Epidemiology of the University of Athens (PhD advisor Prof. A. Trichopoulou). He successfully defended his thesis on epidemiology of dementia in 2008 (grade ‘arista’). Dr. Stathopoulos was trained in Internal Medicine and Neurogenetics at the University of Munich (LMU) for 1.5 years (2004-5) as a DAAD and Onassis Foundation scholar, in Psychiatry (Greek Center for Mental Health and Research, 2005-6) and in Neurology (General Athens Hospital ‘G. Gennimatas’, 2008-12). He specialized in Neuroimmunology initially at the University of Athens (Neuroimmunology Unit, 2013-4) under the mentorship of Dr. Dalakas and later at Yale University (Departments of Neurology and Immunobiology), where he was trained in laboratory and clinic by Drs. K. O’Connor and D. Hafler. At Yale University Dr. Stathopoulos held the positions of visiting scientist / Greek Neurological Society scholar (one year), post-doctoral associate (six months), and Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology clinical fellow with protected research time (three years). Dr. Stathopoulos subsequently worked as a neurologist in the Department of Neuroimmunology and Multiple Sclerosis of the University of Zurich (Chief: Prof. R. Martin) for one year before joining the First Department of Neurology at Eginiteion Hospital in 2020 as a scientific collaborator. Dr. Stathopoulos was elected Assistant Professor of Neurology and Neuroimmunology at the University of Athens in 12/2021.
Dr. Stahopoulos’ research focuses on disease mechanisms in autoimmune neurological disorders (multiple sclerosis, neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorders, autoimmune encephalitis, myasthenia gravis, CIDP). The approach he uses in the laboratory involves molecular immunology and the study of autoreactive B and T lymphocytes and antibodies. Dr. Stathopoulos is the principal investigator of a three-year program of the Neuroimmunology Laboratory of Eginiteion Hospital, which will accommodate graduate student A. Alexaki and collaborate with the laboratory of G. Pavlopoulos at BSRC A. Fleming.
Selected publications
Stathopoulos P, Alexopoulos H, Dalakas MC. Autoimmune antigenic targets at the node of Ranvier in demyelinating disorders. Nat Rev Neurol. 2015 Mar;11(3):143-56. doi: 10.1038/nrneurol.2014.260. Epub 2015 Jan 27. PMID: 25623793.
Willis SN, Stathopoulos P, Chastre A, Compton SD, Hafler DA, O'Connor KC. Investigating the Antigen Specificity of Multiple Sclerosis Central Nervous System-Derived Immunoglobulins. Front Immunol. 2015 Nov 25;6:600. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2015.00600. PMID: 26648933; PMCID: PMC4663633.
Vander Heiden JA, Stathopoulos P, Zhou JQ, Chen L, Gilbert TJ, Bolen CR, Barohn RJ, Dimachkie MM, Ciafaloni E, Broering TJ, Vigneault F, Nowak RJ, Kleinstein SH, O'Connor KC. Dysregulation of B Cell Repertoire Formation in Myasthenia Gravis Patients Revealed through Deep Sequencing. J Immunol. 2017 Feb 15;198(4):1460-1473. doi: 10.4049/jimmunol.1601415. Epub 2017 Jan 13. PMID: 28087666; PMCID: PMC5296243.
Stathopoulos P, Kumar A, Nowak RJ, O'Connor KC. Autoantibody-producing plasmablasts after B cell depletion identified in muscle-specific kinase myasthenia gravis. JCI Insight. 2017 Sep 7;2(17):e94263. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.94263. PMID: 28878127; PMCID: PMC5621905.
Cotzomi E*, Stathopoulos P*, Lee CS, Ritchie AM, Soltys JN, Delmotte FR, Oe T, Sng J, Jiang R, Ma AK, Vander Heiden JA, Kleinstein SH, Levy M, Bennett JL, Meffre E, O'Connor KC. Early B cell tolerance defects in neuromyelitis optica favour anti-AQP4 autoantibody production. Brain. 2019 Jun 1;142(6):1598-1615. doi: 10.1093/brain/awz106. PMID: 31056665; PMCID: PMC6536857.
Takata K*, Stathopoulos P*, Cao M, Mané-Damas M, Fichtner ML, Benotti ES, Jacobson L, Waters P, Irani SR, Martinez-Martinez P, Beeson D, Losen M, Vincent A, Nowak RJ, O'Connor KC. Characterization of pathogenic monoclonal autoantibodies derived from muscle-specific kinase myasthenia gravis patients. JCI Insight. 2019 Jun 20;4(12):e127167. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.127167. PMID: 31217355; PMCID: PMC6629167.
Fichtner ML, Vieni C, Redler RL, Kolich L, Jiang R, Takata K, Stathopoulos P, Suarez PA, Nowak RJ, Burden SJ, Ekiert DC, O'Connor KC. Affinity maturation is required for pathogenic monovalent IgG4 autoantibody development in myasthenia gravis. J Exp Med. 2020 Dec 7;217(12):e20200513. doi: 10.1084/jem.20200513. PMID: 32820331; PMCID: PMC7953735.
Zografou C, Vakrakou AG, Stathopoulos P. Short- and Long-Lived Autoantibody-Secreting Cells in Autoimmune Neurological Disorders. Front Immunol. 2021 Jun 17;12:686466. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.686466. PMID: 34220839; PMCID: PMC8248361.
All publications
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/myncbi/1fUb7QV5ZMHQB/bibliography/public/