Orexin Across the Spectrum: From Neurobiology to Clinical Practice

Clete A. Kushida, M.D., Ph.D., FAASM is a neurologist, Chief of the Stanford Division of Sleep Medicine, Medical Director of the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center, Associate Chair and Professor in the Stanford Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University Medical Center, and Director of the Stanford Human Sleep Research Laboratory. Dr. Kushida received his B.A.S. degree (Biological Sciences and Psychology) and M.S. degree (Biological Sciences) at Stanford University; M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Chicago; and completed a neurology residency at the University of California San Diego and a sleep medicine fellowship at Stanford University. He served as inaugural President of the World Sleep Society, past President of the World Sleep Federation, past President of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, past President of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies Board of Directors, and founding President of the California Sleep Society. He also served as Chair of the Standards of Practice Committee of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and is currently Founding Chair of both the International Sleep Medicine Practice Recommendations Committee and the International Sleep Research Training Program of the World Sleep Society.

Dr. Jennifer Zitser Koren is a senior neurologist and sleep physician at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, where she works across the Movement Disorders Unit, Sleep Department, and autonomic laboratory. Her clinical and research work focuses on the intersection of sleep medicine, movement disorders, autonomic neuroscience, and cognitive aging, with particular emphasis on Parkinson’s disease, REM sleep behavior disorder, hypersomnolence disorders, and early markers of neurodegeneration.

Dr. Zitser Koren completed neurology training at Tel Aviv Medical Center, followed by advanced international training as an Atlantic Fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute at UCSF and as an International Sleep Research Fellow at Stanford University. She is certified in sleep medicine by the World Sleep Society.

Her research has explored sleep and autonomic dysfunction as windows into prodromal neurodegeneration, including work on REM sleep behavior disorder, Parkinson’s disease, sleep architecture, and autonomic biomarkers. She has published in leading journals including Sleep, Neurology, Brain, JAMA Neurology, Sleep Medicine Reviews, and npj Parkinson’s Disease, and is actively involved in international sleep and movement disorders education and research.

Dr. Arnulf is a sleep neurologist and Professor of Neurology at the Sorbonne University, Paris France. She is also the Director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. She received her medical degree from the University of Grenoble, a master's degree from the University of Lyon and her doctorate from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford USA in the research group of Emmanuel Mignot, studying Kleine-Levin syndrome and narcolepsy. Her research program at the Paris Brain Institute focuses on neurological sleep disorders, abnormal behaviors during sleep, sleep in Parkinson's disease and central hypersomnia's.

Margaret Blattner, MD, PhD, is a Senior Associate Consultant in Sleep Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Blattner's clinical practice focuses on the intersection of sleep disorders and neurologic health, particularly central disorders of hypersomnolence, including narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia. Her research focuses on improving targeted diagnostic approaches and advancing understanding of the underlying physiology of hypersomnia. 

Silvia Conway is a clinical psychologist trained at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil, and a doctoral student at the Institute of Psychiatry Hospital das Clínicas, Faculty of Medicine, University of São Paulo  (HC-FMUSP). She specializes in the treatment of sleep disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and tinnitus. She holds a Master of Science degree from the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP), Brazil. She serves as a clinical psychologist at the Sleep Outpatient Clinic, Institute of Psychiatry (HC-FMUSP), and at the Tinnitus Outpatient Clinic, Department of Otoneurolgy (HC-FMUSP). She is also a co-founder of AkasA- Formação e  Conhecimento, an education and professional develpment organization based in Brazil. 

Dr. Dauvilliers is a Professor of Neurology and Physiology and the Head of the Clinical and Research Activity of the Sleep Lab at the University of Montpellier. He is also the coordinator of the French National Reference Network for Orphan Diseases and Director of one research group in the Institute of Neuroscience INSERM, Montpellier. He has authored and coauthored more than 400 papers published in international and national peer-reviewed journals and several book chapters.

After going through medical school at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Dr. Emami was accepted in the anesthesiology residency program of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. She became a board-certified anesthesiologist and joined the sleep program at the University of Chicago as a post doc sleep medicine fellow in 2014-2015. Then, she did a six-month neuro-anesthesia fellowship at UCSF. At the same time, after going through USMLE exams, she was matched in the anesthesiology program of Georgia Regent University in 2017. Two years later she was accepted by the World Sleep Society to join the University of Sydney as a part of the International Sleep Research and Training Program (ISRTP) in 2019-2020. Currently, Dr. Emami works as an anesthesiologist-sleep specialist and runs three sleep clinics. She also works as an anesthesiologist in a large hospital in Tehran.

Dr. Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer is a Professor of Neurology and Staff in the Sleep Disorders and Epilepsy Centers at Cleveland Clinic. She is the Director Emeritus of the Sleep Disorders Center. She has led the development of one of the largest, multidisciplinary sleep teams in the nation. 

Dr. Heidbreder is a neurologist and sleep physician. She is currently a senior consultant and deputy head of the sleep laboratory at the Department of Neurology at the Medical University of Innsbruck. She completed her degree at the Ruhr University in Bochum Germany and completed specialist training as a neurologist at the Department of Neurology at the University of Münster. Her research interests include a focus on excessive daytime sleepiness and central disorders of hypersomnolence. 

Yuichi Inoue completed his MD from Tottori University Faculty of Medicine, Tottori Pref. in the year 1987, and BS from Tokyo Medical University-Tokyo in 1982. He worked as a Professor of Psychiatry at Tokyo Medical University in 2007 and became Director of Japan Somnology Center Neuropsychiatric Research Institute in 2008, in the same year he was the Professor of Somnology at Tokyo Medical University and became President of Yoyogi Sleep Disorder Center in 2011. He is involved in The Japanese Society of Sleep Research, Japanese Society of Biological Psychiatry, Japan Society of Neurovegetative Research, World Federation of Sleep Research Society, and World Sleep 2015 as Board of Director, Board of Councilor, Board of Councilor, Programme Committee Co-chair and Organizing Committee Chair respectively. He has more than 190 publications on his name in the English language.

Dr. Karageorgiou completed both his MD and PhD degrees from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He worked as a post-doctoral associate at the Brain Sciences Center of the University of Minnesota, he also completed a residency in Neurology at the University of Minnesota. After his residency he joined the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California San Francisco. Before returning to Greece he served as Assistant Professor in Neurology at UCSF. Dr. Karageorgiou has worked to establish the Sleep and Memory Center at the Neurological Institute of Athens. With this he has combined his clinical practice with helping patients with sleep problems and cognitive impairment with his research in the field of Cognitive Behavioral Sleep Medicine. 

Thomas Kilduff, Ph.D. received his PhD from Stanford University. He directs the Center for Neuroscience at SRI, a non-profit research institute in Menlo Park, Ca. He is co-discoverer of the neuropeptide hypocretin (aka orexin). His laboratory focuses on the neural circuitry underlying sleep/wake control and the development of therapeutics for insomnia and narcolepsy. He has been elected to several leadership positions in the Sleep Research Society (SRS) and has served on the Executive Boards of the SRS and APSS. He is an AAAS Fellow, an SRI Fellow, a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology and has received the SRS Distinguished Scientist Award, a Research Career Award from the European Narcolepsy Network, and the SCNi Academic Prize from the Sir Jules Thorn Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at Oxford University.

Kiran Maski, MD MPH is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School and child neurologist and sleep medicine specialist at Boston Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts USA/ She is an advocate and researcher for CNS Disorders of Hypersomnolence across the lifespan. She has received grant support from the National Institutes of Health and foundations including the American Sleep Medicine Foundation, Wake up Narcolepsy and industry (Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) and has a number of leadership roles in the American Academy of Sleep Medicine including guideline development for CNS Disorders of Hypersomnolence treatments and conducting Multiple Sleep Latency Tests in children. 

Dr. Pérez Carbonell is a Consultant Neurologist and Sleep Specialist at the Sleep Disorders Centre, Guy's and St Thomas's NHS Foundation Trust (London, UK). She is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Department of Academic Neuroscience. Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (King's College London, UK); and a Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Prevention, Detection and Diagnosis at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health (Queen Mary University of London, UK). Dr. Pérez Carbonell is an expert in Sleep Medicine certified by the European Sleep Research Society. She completed her PhD in Medicine and Translational Research in sleep and neurodegenerative diseases at Hospital Clinic (University of Barcelona, Spain).

Dr. Peyron is a neuroscientist and director of research at the center for research in neuroscience of Lyon (CRNL), University of Lyon in France. She is also the co-leader of the SLEEP lab at the CRNL and leads the research group on narcolepsy. Dr. Peyron participated in the discovery of hypocretins neuropeptides (Orexins) while a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University. She also showed that hypocretin neuropeptides are missing in narcoleptic patients while post-doc. 

Dr. Rosenzweig is currently Head of the Sleep and Brain Plasticity Centre at King's College London. The purpose of the SleepCity Laboratory is to generate a new understanding of mechanisms behind serious neurological and psychiatric disorders, and to propose their treatment and prevention through sleep neurobiology. She is also a consultant neuropsychiatrist specializing in sleep and has received a Wellcome Trust award for research in unravelling the mechanisms of sleep, neuroplasticity and inflammation. 

Dr. Takeshi Sakurai is a Professor at the University of Tsukuba within the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (WPI-IIIS) in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. Dr. Sakurai conducts his research within the Takeshi Sakurai Lab in Molecular Behavioral Physiology. He is known for his work in neuropeptides, sleep-wake regulation, and orexin research. 

Sheila Sivam, MD, PhD, is a sleep clinician and researcher based in Sydney, Australia, affiliated with the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. She is actively involved in clinical research on narcolepsy type 1 and orexin-based therapies. Dr. Sivam has contributed as an author and investigator to several phase 3 clinical programs examining treatment effects on quality of life and related outcomes, and has participated in international collaborations supporting the development and dissemination of sleep medicine research. 

Dr. Danielle Wasserman Berkovitz is currently a senior doctor in Neurology and Epilepsy at Shaare Zedk Hospital, Jerusalem. She is a supervisor of Clinical Neuropsychiatry MSc at King's College, she is a King's College Honorary Research Associate, as well as a lecturer in Epilepsy and Sleep. Dr. Berkovitz specializes in Neurology, sleep disorders, epilepsy treatment and PSG.