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By courtesy of the family of Gregor Wenning


Gregor K. Wenning passed away on February 11, 2024, 9 years after he and Alessandra Fanciulli published the first comprehensive book on Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), in which one of us (Kurt Jellinger) had the honor and pleasure to contribute two chapters. This was one of the highlights in Gregor's intense scientific work that had already begun with his doctoral thesis on motoric system degeneration under Albert C. Ludolph.

In 1991, Gregor started his specialist training at the Neurological Clinic of Tübingen University under Johannes Dichgans, motivated by his fascination for movement disorders and related neurodegenerative diseases.

Some of his first publications, together with his senior tutor Niall Quinn, concerned MSA, which, since his activities as clinical research fellow, in 1992–94 at the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London (directed by Charles David Marsden) remained his favorite subject of research. In 1994, 1995 and 1997 (together with Niall Quinn, Susan Daniel and others) he published clinicopathological studies on a large number of autopsy-proven MSA cases, and on the first cases of "silent" MSA. Although Gregor's scientific work was focused on MSA, related atypical parkinsonian disorders and autonomic function testing, where he pioneered methods of exploring clinical and basic problems, he was also interested in many other areas of clinical and basic neurobiology. He was a member of study groups that revealed the natural history of MSA and Parkinson disease and was engaged in the study of orthostatic hypotension and other autonomic disorders.

On his academic path, Gregor, together with Werner Poewe, became Coordinator of the European MSA Study Group. In 2002, he founded the Autonomic Function Unit (AFU) at the Neurological Clinic of the Medical University of Innsbruck (MUI), and in 2006, he was appointed chief of the Division of Clinical Neurobiology, MUI, and founded a Neuroscience Research Laboratory with Nadia Stefanova as section head. Together with his research team he developed methods to elucidate the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of "the beast", as Niall Quinn had called MSA. In addition, Gregor and his working group at MUI performed striatal graft transplantations in rodent models of MSA and worked on other therapeutic options for this debilitating disorder. Thus, Gregor's name became synonymous with the goal to unveil the secrets of MSA.

In addition, he was engaged in promoting consensus criteria for the diagnosis and classification of this disorder as well as in identifying novel therapeutic targets in MSA models. He was an active member of the Movement Disorder Society (MSD) panel, which in 2002/2003 published criteria for the Hoehn &Yahr staging and clinical criteria for parkinsonian disorders. In 2005, Gregor and Kurt Jellinger published the first neuropathologic grading of MSA. In 2017, he was actively engaged in defining the MDS criteria for staging of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Due to his international reputation, Gregor became chairman of the Movement Disorders Society MSA (MODIMSA) Study Group in 2021. In 2019, he was appointed President of the scientific advisory board of US MSA Coalition. In 2014, as member of the MSA Task Force, he published criteria for cognitive impairment in MSA. Among Gregor's publications, the Second Consensus Statement on the diagnosis of MSA, published together with Sid Gilman in Neurology, 2008, was most frequently cited (3218 times), which was followed by the Movement Society Criteria for the Diagnosis of MSA in 2022.

Gregor’s research interests were not limited to MSA but also linked to other fields of movement disorders, like PSP, dystonia and ataxias, where he tried to bring together the various fields of degenerative movement disorders. The results of his research are documented in 738 publications, most of them in highly qualified international journals, that were cited 45,923 times and had 118,868 reads (according to Research Gate, March 2024), manifested by an h-index of 110 and D-index of 112. Approximately 340 publications were dedicated to MSA, 269 to Parkinson disease and 56 to PSP and related diseases. In addition, Gregor, together with others, published 72 books and book chapters. His latest publications in 2024 concerned progressive brain atrophy in MSA, comorbidities in MSA, pluripotent stem cell banking of MSA patients, and phenoconversion in pure autonomic failure.

Gregor was not only a prominent speaker around the globe and considered a leading expert on movement disorders by the international scientific community, but he was also an excellent organizer. He organized many international meetings, was member of numerous national and international societies and was coordinator of various national and international boards and research programs. Under his guidance, many doctoral theses were written, and many postdocs were working in his study group and lab.

He received many prestigious awards for his research on MSA, among them the Research Prize of the Austrian Parkinson Society (1998), the Oppenheimer MSA Award (2004) and the JP Schouppe Award for Lifetime Achievements in MSA (2020). Most recently, in 2023, he was awarded the Senator-Doktor-Franz Burda Prize for his excellent research on Parkinson’s disease.

One of us (Kurt Jellinger) met Gregor during his guest professorship at MUI in 1998. Kurt and Gregor became not only joint researchers but also close friends. In 2000, they published their first paper about striatonigral degeneration, an earlier expression for MSA, which was followed by more than 50 papers dealing with a variety of neurodegenerative disorders. In 2008, together with an international research group, they defined MSA as a primary oligodendrogliopathy, highlighting the role of oligodendroglia in its pathogenesis. Their last joint paper (2021) asked the question whether MSA is a prion disorder. Our scientific exchange and our visits to Innsbruck deepened not only our cooperation and mutual friendship, but also the contact with his family, to whom we express our deepest compassion and sympathy.

Gregor was Editor of Journal of Neural Transmission for more than twenty years and contributed his expertise as well as outstanding papers to this journal. Gregor's death is a profound personal loss to us and to the whole neuroscience research community. We all knew him as an excellent scientist, a caring mentor and close friend, and we will miss him dearly. The combination of his clinical bedside work, basic research and dedicated teaching provided a wealth of lasting scientific results, and his well-written papers will long remain a pleasure to read. Gregor's name will always be associated with his academic achievements and his role as a scientist and promoter in our steady quest for unveiling the secrets of the human brain.