Meet Our Speakers

Associate Professor Carol Whelan was appointed as Consultant Cardiologist with an interest in imaging, heart failure and in particular, cardiac amyloidosis, in October 2009 at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. She was appointed as Honorary Associate Professor at UCL in recognition for her work at the National Amyloidosis Centre. She became the hospital clinical lead for Heart Failure in 2011 and is now the Trust lead.

In November 2023, A/Prof Whelan was appointed as deputy chair on the board of the British Society for Heart Failure. She wrote the chapter on cardiac amyloidosis in the latest Oxford Textbook of Heart Failure and has published widely on this subject.

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As a recognised international clinical expert on cardiac amyloidosis, she assisted the NICE committee in their evaluation of two novel treatments, inotersen and patisiran, for hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis and more recently, daratumumab for the treatment of AL amyloidosis. In 2024, she was part of the NAC TTR taskforce group to roll out prescriptions to eligible patients across England and Wales, for the TTR stabiliser, tafamidis, after its approval by NICE for ATTR cardiomyopathy.

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Professor Efstathios Kastritis, is Professor of Clinical Therapeutics/Medical Oncology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUOA), School of Medicine. He graduated from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens School of Medicine and completed residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Medical Oncology at the Department of Clinical Therapeutics. He received his Doctorate from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and was a post-doctoral Fellow at the Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

 

Professor Kastritis research focus includes clinical and translational research in plasma cell dyscrasias, especially amyloidosis, multiple myeloma, Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia and monoclonal gammopathies of renal and clinical significance, resulting in more than 460 published papers in peer reviewed journals.  

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Professor Kastritis is also highly active in the development and leadership of international clinical trials.

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Prof. Sekijima is the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine (Neurology & Rheumatology) at Shinshu University School of Medicine, Matsumoto, Japan.

 

He graduated from the Shinshu University School of Medicine in 1991, and his postgraduate training included internal medicine, neurology, clinical genetics, molecular genetics, and amyloidosis.

 

As a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Kelly’s lab at the Scripps Research Institute from 2002 to 2004,  he elucidated the biological and chemical basis for tissue-selective transthyretin amyloid disease and started his research on the clinical application of transthyretin tetramer stabilizers. The clinical trials for these studies were conducted upon his return to Shinshu University as a professor.

 

Prof. Yoshiki Sekijima is a board-certified internist, neurologist, rheumatologist, and clinical geneticist. His scientific interests are in the field of systemic amyloidoses, especially transthyretin amyloidosis, and neurodegenerative diseases (protein misfolding diseases) including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. He is the Vice President/President elect of the International Society of Amyloidosis (Member of the Nomenclature Committee) and the World Federation of Neurology, and a board member of the Japanese Society of Amyloidosis, the Japanese Peripheral Nerve Society, and the Japanese Society for Neuroinfectious Diseases.