Myasthenia Gravis, Part A

Anna Rostedt Punga studied medicine with emphasis on research at the faculty of Medicine, Uppsala University, and already then, she started conducting clinical research on myasthenia gravis (MG) in 1999. She spent 3 months at the Duke MG Clinic with Dr Donald Sanders at a scholarship from the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America. She later qualified as an MD in 2005 and subsequently defended her PhD thesis with focus on different antibody subtypes MG in the department of Neuroscience, Uppsala University, in 2007. Her postdoctoral studies, that focused on preclinical research on the neuromuscular junction in Basel, rendered an international award from the German Myasthenia Gravis Foundation (Eberhardt Pfleiderer Prize). In 2014 she was granted a highly competitive clinical research grant from the Swedish Research Council (success rate 8%) and then built her own research group/lab on MG and the neuromuscular junction at BMC, Uppsala University. The research focuses on improving diagnostic and monitoring tools in MG, including biomarkers and neurophysiology, both in-vivo and in-vitro, as well as novel treatment options. At the moment, she holds multiple highly competitive national research grants from the Swedish Research Council and was recently awarded Göran Gustafssons large prize in medicine for my studies in MG. Her team has pioneered the field of microRNA biomarker discovery in MG and has several publications on this topic. Anna Rostedt Punga combines the role of professor of clinical neurophysiology with a clinical position as consultant clinical neurophysiologist at the Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Uppsala University Hospital. She also sees MG patients from all over Sweden in the Neurology outpatient unit at Uppsala University hospital. Further, she is the responsible physician for ongoing communication of research to the Swedish NEURO association of MG patients, connecting research with the stakeholder ́s community. She has published more than 50 peer-reviewed original articles as well as 8 review articles and 2 book chapters.

Dr. Barnett-Tapia’s main research interest is patient-centered outcomes and patient preference elicitation in patients with Neuromuscular Disorders and Neurofibromatosis. She developed the Myasthenia Gravis Impairment Index (MGII) a novel, patient-centred measure of disease severity. She has received funding from MGNet and Muscular Dystrophy Canada to study how people with myasthenia gravis make treatment decisions. She is a member of the scientific council of the Myasthenia Gravis of America (MGFA). In 2020, she was the inaugural recipient of the Surinderjit Singh Young Lectureship Award, from the American Academy of Neuromuscular and Electrodiagnostic Medicine (AANEM) and in 2023 she received the MGFA medical partner of the year award.