AES 2021 Meeting Summary
On December 3-7th, 2021, the American Epilepsy Society (AES) held its annual conference to bring together clinicians and scientists on the cutting edge of epilepsy research. This year had a multitude of presentations related to Dravet syndrome, making for an exciting few days focused on what we have learned about Dravet syndrome through research and where the field is going next.
The conversations kicked off the night before the meeting at the Dravet Syndrome Foundation’s (DSF) Research Roundtable. We heard presentations from past DSF grant awardees along with other experts in the field. DSF also announced the six new 2021 Grant Awardees at the Roundtable, bringing DSF’s total funding for research to over $5.6M. You can read more about the Research Roundtable here.
The following several days at the AES meeting were full of discussions and presentations surrounding many topics in Dravet syndrome including: genetic-based therapies, the ketogenic diet, medications and preclinical compounds for the treatment of Dravet syndrome, special topics of interest, genetic testing, and natural history and observational studies. If you are interested in reading more about what was discussed at AES 2021, DSF Scientific Director, Dr. Veronica Hood, wrote a blog post detailing some of the most relevant presentations. You can find the blog post here.