Researcher of the Year 2021 - Wolfgang R. Sperr
Wolfgang R. Sperr, MD, is Professor of Medicine at the Department of Internal Medicine I, Division of Hematology and Hemostaseology of the Medical University of Vienna. He has completed his medical degree at the Medical School of the University of Vienna. After a research fellowship at the research laboratory of Prof. Peter Valent he did his medical training at the Medical University of Vienna and became a specialist for Internal Medicine in 1999, Specialist for Hematology and Oncology 2001 and specialist for Intensive Care Medicine in 2009.
Dr. Sperr’s focus in research are myeloid disorders including mastocytosis and myeloid leukemias, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the development of improved treatment in these disorders as well as the management of critically ill patients with hematologic neoplasms. A special focus in his research is the diagnosis and management of mast cell disorders, including systemic mastocytosis.
Wolfgang Sperr authored more than 300 research articles and review articles published in various prestigious journals, including Blood, Clinical Cancer Research, Leukemia, and Lancet Hematology. Major contributions arising from his work includes the morphologic classification of neoplastic mast cell subsets in mastocytosis patients, and the clinical validation of disease-related parameters and biomarkers, including serum tryptase, in this disease. In addition, he identified a number of prognostic parameters in systemic mastocytosis and developed and validated the International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSM) for mastocytosis.
Wolfgang Sperr is board member of the European Competence Network on Mastocytosis (ECNM) and is the founder and coordinator of the ECNM registry. Using the growing database of the ECNM registry, his group and also many other research groups in the ECNM have been able to publish seminal investigations and clinical studies in the past 10 years. In fact, since 2012 (foundation year of the registry), more than 4900 patients have been collected in this registry by various centers of the ECNM. The resulting papers have all been published in prestigious top journals, including Lancet Hematology, Leukemia, or Theranostics.
Prof. Sperr received the ECNM gold medal and certificate as Researcher of the Year 2021 of the ECNM for his seminal contributions to the field in Brno (Czech Republic) in 2021.