Dr. Jakob Kreye awarded with PhD prize

Congratulations! Dr. Jakob Kreye, Postdoc at the AG Autoimmune Encephalopathies at the DZNE Berlin, has won the 2018 PhD prize of the Berliner Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie und Neurologie (BGPN).

The prize is bestowed for the best doctoral thesis in the fields of neurology and psychiatry submitted last year. It is endowed with 500 euros. In addition, the prizewinner is invited to present the work at one of the scientific meetings of the Society.

Jakob Kreye was awarded for his dissertation "Repertoire analysis of monoclonal antibodies of CSF in patients with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis".

The core of his doctoral thesis is the establishment of a molecular biological methodology for the recombinant production of monoclonal antibodies from human cerebrospinal fluid samples. Jakob Kreye and his research colleagues worked on eight cases of the most common form of autoimmune encephalitis, the so-called NMDAR encephalitis. For the first time in the world, human monoclonal NMDAR-specific antibodies were isolated from patients and their pathogenic effects demonstrated in numerous models. These results have shown that NMDAR antibodies alone cause neurotoxic effects and therefore any positive NMDAR antibody finding in daily patient care should be considered a risk factor for neuro-psychiatric symptoms.