Henrik Klitgaard
Henrik Klitgaard, PhD, has more than 30 years of experience in vice president positions in pharma within the discovery and development of neurology drugs. He received a Master of Science in 1987 and a PhD in 1989, both in Human Physiology at the August Krogh Institut at the University Copenhagen in Denmark. During his Post Doc, funded by Statens Naturvidenskabelige Forskningsråd, he conducted his Post Doc at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, the Department of Histology in Padova, Italy, and at Harvard University in USA. Henrik Klitgaard was then recruited to Novo Nordisk as Department Head in order to set up a laboratory for epilepsy screening and research. This was followed by a promotion to the large Department of Growth Hormone before he was headhunted to lead The Neurology Discovery Department at UCB Pharma in Brussels, Belgium.
During his 20 years at UCB, Henrik Klitgaard focused on neurology discovery and new paradigms for epilepsy drug discovery. One important example was the rejection of the relevance of antiseizure phenotypic screening in rodents, as UCB could demonstrate a promising drug candidate in epilepsy to be devoid of antiseizure activity in normal animals. These discovery efforts created the foundation for UCB to become a world leader in providing new and important treatments for epilepsy. And the first to introduce a new blockbuster for epilepsy. For this achievement, he received the Accelerator Award from the Epilepsy Foundation in the US – and remains the only scientist from Pharma to have received it.
Henrik Klitgaard also became invited to join the Scientific Advisory Board at the largest patient organization in epilepsy – CURE. And he was invited to propose a strategy for the NIH epilepsy screening program according to his principles. Up to today, he continues to remain involved in the NIH program in epilepsy. Since 2020, he has been co-founder of NEUmiRNA and CEO of Klitgaard Epilepsy Consulting. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, various reviews, and book chapters and provided numerous presentations at epilepsy meetings, not the least at the Opening Presidents Symposium at the American Epilepsy Society meeting.
