Dr Luis Querol Gutiérrez

I graduated in Medicine at the University of Oviedo in 2004. I completed residency in Neurology at the Santa Creu i Sant Pau Hospital in Barcelona in 2009. That same year I was awarded the competitive Rio-Hortega grant in Neuroimmunology in the group of Prof. Isabel Illa. In 2012, I worked as an associate researcher in the group of Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Department of Neurology, Yale University (USA), where I developed projects related to autoantibodies in multiple sclerosis and myasthenia gravis. In 2013 I completed my PhD in Medicine in the group of Prof. Isabel Illa, at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, thanks to studies that identified clinically useful antibodies in autoimmune neuropathies. These studies described anti-contactin-1 antibodies in a specific subgroup of patients with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP) in what resulted the first clinically useful marker detected in CIDP. On returning from the United States, I continued to work in the Neuromuscular Diseases Unit of the Santa Creu i Sant Pau Hospital, where I combined clinical care with laboratory and translational research in the field of autoantibodies and immune-mediated neuropathies. The studies on autoantibodies in CIDP, that our group pioneered, questioned the homogeneous nature of the disease and enabled the discovery and validation, by our group and others, of several other clinically useful autoantibodies in this disorder (such as anti-NF155, anti-pan-neurofascin or anti-CASPR1). All these studies in CIDP biomarkers granted me the participation in the recent diagnostic and therapeutic guidelines of the European Academy of Neurology/Peripheral Nerve Society, in which I was appointed team leader of the biomarker group. The new version of the guidelines acknowledges the existence of a novel category of inflammatory neuropathies, the autoimmune nodopathies, that derive directly from our discoveries and proposals. All these antibodies are currently implemented in the clinical routine and commercialized in our Center under an ISO9001-approved protocol. Finally, my background on autoantibodies and other biomarkers granted me the participation in multiple Steering Committees of clinical trials in antibody-mediated neuropathies.
I am currently appointed coordinator and principal investigator for the Autoimmune Neurology Program of the European Rare Diseases Network-NMD Neuromuscular Sant Pau and Associate Professor in Neurology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. I currently mentor 4 PhD students and supervise 3 postdoctoral researchers.