2024 Winner
Professor Kerstin Hellwig
Senior consultant at St Josef Hospital, Ruhr University, Bochum in Germany. Chair and founder of the German MS and Pregnancy Registry, which currently holds information on more than 5,000 pregnancies.
Professor Kerstin Hellwig is the winner of the 2024 Rachel Horne Prize for her pioneering research into understanding and navigating the safety of approved treatments for women with MS before, during and after pregnancy – so as to ensure the health of both mother and child.
Professor Hellwig specialises in MS and neuroimmunology and is a leading clinician-scientist in the field of MS and family planning. She is also chair and founder of the German MS and Pregnancy Registry (DMSKW), the nationwide, observational cohort study of pregnant women with MS or Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum.
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“This prize recognises Dr Hellwig’s exceptional clinical research work over the past two decades that has improved the care of women with MS. As a result of her ground-breaking work, physicians now have evidence-based information to optimise the treatment of women with MS during this critical time of their life, minimising the risk for the mother and baby.”
Professor Emmanuelle Waubant, chair of International Women in MS that oversaw the review and judging process.
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“Twenty years ago, we knew about the natural course of MS during pregnancy and postpartum. Now we get a granular picture of the complicated interplay of the exposure of different disease modifying therapies on infants’ health, and also the effect of the withdrawal of the drugs on maternal health. In a disease where young women during childbearing age are affected, and potent treatments are available, this information is urgently needed and providing it in an informed decision process is modern medicine.’
Professor Kerstin Hellwig.
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"MS is disproportionately diagnosed in young women, many of whom want to still have children. Yet historically there has been little research on how best to combine MS treatments while also making safe, informed decisions around family planning. Professor Hellwig has led the way in changing this."
Rachel Horne, founder of the prize.
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Professor Hellwig went to medical school at Ruhr University, undertook an internship in Tanzania, a year at the Université Louis Pasteur, France, and her final year at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. In 2012, she secured a prestigious German Research Foundation grant to train in clinical research at the University of Southern California, USA, which included a research project under the mentorship of Dr Annette Langer-Gould.
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