ECTRIMS 2025 – Meet the Speakers

“I’m really looking forward to this year’s ECTRIMS edition in Barcelona because of the recent breakthroughs that we’ve had. We have seen that the pathological field has actually progressed quite a bit, showing new types of pathology that have also been visualised on MRI with new types of MRI scans, which have also been related to new identified patterns of clinical progression, so-called smouldering MS or PIRA. All these new insights are very exciting and now are all coming together at this year’s edition.”

“Have you ever tried working out to the rhythm of music or noticed how your steps fall into sync when you’re jogging with music? That’s the power of synchronisation and it may be more than just motivating. In our pilot study we explore whether synchronising walking to music can announce the effects of gait rehabilitation in people with multiple sclerosis.”

“I am so excited to be presenting at the 2025 ECTRIMS conference in Barcelona, Spain. My session is with two of my colleagues and we’ll be talking about social determinants of health and basically about how these different factors such as the environment, where a person lives, their access to healthcare, etc. How these factors can really impact healthcare outcomes. Even sometimes more than the disease-modifying therapy that we prescribe for people.”

“Have you ever asked people living with progressive MS what really matters to them, and then work with them to make that happen? That’s exactly what our Living Well Program aims to do. My name is Silvia Poli, and at ECTRIMS RIMS 2025, I will be presenting together with Prof. Das Nair, our research funded by the International Progressive MS Alliance on supporting people with progressive MS, identifying and working toward goals that are truly meaningful to them.”

“In my talk at ECTRIMS 2025, I’ll be discussing the definition of clinically meaningful cognitive change. And this is a really difficult topic, and it’s something that we really need to understand. Both in the context of clinical trial outcome development and also for clinical care of our patients with MS.”

“In this session, I will be sharing a few insights on the link between Epstein-Barr Virus and MS symptoms and why this connection is more clinically relevant now than ever before. So first of all, EBV is not no longer just a suspected risk factor for MS, but we think more and more that is a causal trigger. And this makes it possible for us to enter a new area of clinical trials where we try to target EBV in itself. We can do this by many, in many ways, for example, with antiviral therapies, T cell immunotherapies, or vaccines. So I would go into different trial designs and how we can design them to work against Epstein-Barr Virus and what we can learn from doing this.”

“The topic of my research is seeing how AI can help us in MS research and in MS care. Now, here in this nursing session, we will delve deeper into the question of whether AI can help us put patients with MS more centrally in the decision-making process of their disease management. And I’m very excited to meet nurses, actually, an audience that I didn’t engage with that much already, to see what their vision is on AI.”