BELGIUM
Professor Patrick Cras
Professor of Neurology- Department Chair of Neurology Afdeling Neurologie, Antwerp University Hospital
Presently Chairman of the Department of Neurology of the University Hospital of Antwerp and professor of neurology at the University of Antwerp, Patrick Cras trained as a medical doctor at the University of Antwerp (UA, 1983), as a research fellow in the Laboratory of Neuropathology at the Born Bunge Institute (1983-1985), later in the laboratory of anatomopathology at the University Hospital Antwerp, after which he obtained a specialty certification in neurology (1989). This was followed by a Fogarty Fellowship at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Ohio (1989-1991), where he worked on a doctoral thesis on the Pathogenesis of senile plaques in Alzheimer’s disease. Appointed as an attending physician at the Dept. of Neurology at the Antwerp University Hospital (1991), he became associate professor of neurology in 1995.
He (co-)authored more than 300 international peer reviewed articles and received 3 research awards (Specia, Divry and Belgian Geriatric Society). He is also the Chairman of the Ethics committee, Antwerp University Hospital (2000-present) and University of Antwerp (2008-present), a member of several committees of the High Council for Medicine (Hoge Gezondheidsraad), the National Bioethics Committee (Raadgevend Comité voor Bioethiek), chairman of the Belgian Board of Neurology and of the Neurology Committee of the Commission for Accreditation of Medical Doctors, President of the Belgian Society of Neuropathology as well as treasurer of the European Board of Neurology (Union Européenne des Médecins Spécialistes).
His research interests involve dementia, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, cerebrospinal fluid, movement disorders and the neuropathology of neurodegenerative diseases. He is also interested in the ethics of human experimentation, end-of-life decisions, euthanasia and research involving vulnerable subjects. He has served as principal investigator in numerous pharmaceutical industry sponsored studies with different compounds in Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders.