Wolfgang Löscher - Biography#

Wolfgang Löscher is Head of the Translational Neuropharmacology Lab, NIFE, Department of Experimental Otology of the ENT Clinics, Hannover Medical School and a Professor and former Chair of the Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Pharmacy at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. He was born in Berlin, Germany, and graduated from the Free University of Berlin with a degree in Veterinary Medicine. He pursued postgraduate training and specialization in Pharmacology, particularly Neuropharmacology, and Toxicology in Germany, Denmark, and the United States and holds board certifications in these specialties. He has held posts in academic institutions and the pharmaceutical industry and was appointed as the Director of the Department of Pharmacology in Hannover in 1987, a position that he held for over 30 years. His research interests are in the pharmacology of the brain, including the pharmacology of antiseizure medications, the mechanisms of drug resistance in epilepsy, and the pathophysiology of acquired epilepsies to find new targets for preventive treatment. His many cooperations with the pharmaceutical industry have fostered the development of new antiseizure medications such as levetiracetam (the first blockbuster in epilepsy therapy) and imepitoin (the first therapy developed for canine epilepsy). He has been a founding and managing editor of the journal Epilepsy Research and serves on the editorial board of several scientific journals. He has over 600 refereed publications and an h-index of 92. He has obtained several awards for this research, including the Epilepsy Research Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Pharmacology of Antiepileptic Drugs of the International League against Epilepsy (ILAE) in 2001, the American Epilepsy Society’s Epilepsy Research Award for Basic Science Research in 2006, the Ambassador for Epilepsy Award of the ILAE and IBE in 2011, the European Epileptology Award of the ILAE/CEA in 2014, and the Lifetime Accelerator Award of the Epilepsy Foundation of America in 2018. In 2021, he was identified as one of the world’s most influential researchers by ClarivateTM (Philadelphia). Since 2000, Löscher is elected member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, which is the oldest continuously existing academy of natural sciences and medicine in the world.