Dear CLAE members,

We have been very busy at the CLAE board and would like to keep you informed of our progress. As you will see, we would like for more of our members to get involved as the next year will be critical for us in terms of building an infrastructure.

National affairs:

A- Membership renewal: As the International League Against Epilepsy was requiring that we pay our yearly dues based on the number of active members, and because a number of our active members had not paid their dues in years, Dr Dang Nguyen (our secretary) launched a national campaign to locate our members and confirm their desire to remain involved in the CLAE. I would like to personally thank him for his hard work. At the end of this effort, we officially have 82 active CLAE members and 12 student members, down from the 263 CLAE previously registered members. As we are preparing to open registration to the CLAE meeting, members who have not renewed their membership fees as of March 31st will pay the full registration fee and will stop receiving the newsletter after this one. I want to thank these 94 members for their support. By comparison AES has 137 Canadian active members, so we almost have full representation of clinicians and scientists involved in epilepsy.

B- Canadian League Against Epilepsy Meeting: I would like to thank the more than 60 members who replied to our CME questionnaire in November. Based on their preferences, the scientific committee has provided us with an exciting program that is available on our website at www.clae.org .

Please note the following key dates:

Abstract submission deadline: August 1, 2007
Early registration deadline: August 6, 2007
Abstract acceptance confirmation: August 30, 2007

Based on 150 members participating, we have been able to secure funding to hold this meeting at the Wosk Centre and should be able to get a prominent political figure to be part of the meeting to increase public awareness for epilepsy and epilepsy research. Finding sponsors to support an epilepsy event has been a struggle in our environment, and I would like to thank Drs Warren Blume and Kevin Farrell for their help and our confirmed sponsors thus far: BC Epilepsy Society, Savoy Foundation, Xycorp Inc, EGI (Geodesic) and Brain Lab Inc.

If any members of our League have contacts with companies involved in epilepsy care please encourage them to support our initiative and send me the contact information (apart from a donation from Oryx Pharma, whom we sincerely thank, no other pharmaceutical company has yet supported our effort). We need to build such partnerships as I can only imagine this could limit our ability to continue having this activity on a large scale basis every other year. We considered contacting the American Epilepsy Society, which organises more and more regional meetings, but decided to keep our bi-annual meeting a completely Canadian affair as opposed to the bi-annual North American Regional Congress.

Registration will be open on-line at our web site May 7th
(http://www.clae.org)

C- Epilepsy support in Canada: Our fundraising campaign "UNITE TO CURE EPILEPSY" is still moving forward. Our first step will be in the re-unification of our efforts to promote epilepsy in Canada and I am meeting with the Canadian Epilepsy Alliance on May 4th, specifically with the two people who have fundraising and lobbying experience and who have voluntarily given their time to date. For infrastructure, both Sainte-Justine Hospital and the Robarts Institute have offered access to offices and computers to support our efforts. We will at some point need to hire someone to take up the fundraising activities on a full-time basis and are actively looking for seed money in the range of 50-100K to get things started.

D- CCNS 2007 epilepsy course: Drs Richard Wennberg and Mark Sadler are organising the next epilepsy course for the CCNS meeting to be held in Edmonton from June 19-22, 2007.  I am sorry, but errors creeped into the last CLAE newsletter as to the speakers and their subjects. Here is the revised course program.

a. The course is planned for Wednesday June 20, 2007 from 14h00-17h30.
b. Preliminary program includes:

• Don Gross: Overview of intractable epilepsy in the adult
• Sam Wiebe: Epidemiology and burden of epilepsy in Canada
• Andrew Parent: Overview of epilepsy surgery in the adult
• Andrea Bernasconi: Neuroimaging of epilepsy
• Taufik Valiante: Strategic planning for comprehensive epilepsy care
• Mary Connolly: Pediatric epilepsy treatment overview
• James Rutka: Overview of pediatric epilepsy surgery

We hope to see you there.

E- First Canadian IBRO Neuroscience School: The International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) is organizing the First Canadian IBRO Neuroscience School to be held in association with the joint meeting of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN), Canadian League Against Epilepsy (CLAE) and the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (INMHA) of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The School is also sponsored by the Society for Neuroscience and the National Academy of Sciences of the US, which together with CAN and INMHA are members of the North American Regional Committee of IBRO. Most of the tutors in the school are members of the Canadian Epilepsy Research Initiative (CERI) of the Canadian League against Epilepsy and also members of American Epilepsy Society.

It will provide young promising trainees from Africa and South America the experience of attending a scientific meeting, followed by a one-week specialised neuroscience school in Toronto, Canada. The focus of the School is to provide:

• Understanding of basic mechanisms related to clinical phenomena, therapeutics, and social impact of epilepsy.
• Establish mentorship with students - and thus establish nuclei for further development in corresponding areas.
• Contribute to general education of Students

Check http://schools.ibro.info for details.

International Affairs:

A- AES-CLAE meeting: The meeting in San Diego broke all attendance records for AES with more than 3800 participants. The organisers believe that promoting it as the North American Regional meeting might have played a big role. The next meeting is in 2008 in Seattle. The session chaired by Dr Wiebe on disparities was extremely well attended and Dr Holmes, former president of AES, suggested that this will be one of the regular sessions of future Regional meetings.

B- North American Commission: Work from this commission is progressing. We now have guidelines for creating new chapters in countries interested, and we are hoping to develop partnerships with Spanish, Portuguese and French speaking countries via professorships, telecommunication and training programs. We are also working on launching the first epilepsy centre in Haïti and have received support from the US Haïtian business community.

C- School of 1000: The International League Against Epilepsy is looking for potential teachers to give courses in underdeveloped countries. Here are their criteria:

1) Peer-recognized professional competence and teaching capabilities, best documented by lecturing experience in national or international courses. Research experience, documented by indexed publications are highly desirable, but not mandatory;

2) Knowledge of English is highly desirable, and fluency in an additional language beyond the nominee's mother language would be an advantage. In any case task force members must have sufficient skills in a widely spoken language to be able to communicate with peers outside their regional borders;

3) Nominees should be selected from different disciplines (e.g., clinical epileptology, pediatrics, neurophysiology, imaging, clinical pharmacology, social support activities, basic science, etc.). Nominees need not be a member of an ILAE chapter;

4) Nominees are presumed to be willing to take part in ILAE-related educational activities in the future, but specific commitments are not requested at this stage.

Current Canadian speakers include:
Frederick Andermann, Eva Andermann, Andrea Bernasconi, Neda Bernasconi, Warren Blume, Carol Camfield, Peter Camfield, François Dubeau, Jean Gotman, Marylin Jones-Gotman, Maryse Lassonde, Dan C. McIntyre, Mary Lou Smith, and Sam Wiebe.

I have agreed to join with great pleasure and please let me know who else is interested, there is only a very simple table to fill.

D- A new Ambassador for Epilepsy from Canada: It is my honour and privilege to announce that Dr Eva Andermann has been selected by the ILAE and IBE Executive Committees, meeting jointly, to receive an Ambassador for Epilepsy Award. The award will be presented during the Opening Ceremony of the 27th International Epilepsy Congress, Singapore, in July.

Our next meeting will be at the Congress of the Canadian Neurological Sciences Federation on Wednesday the 20th at noon. I hope to see you there, but as there is a conflict with the epilepsy surgery group, I will try to change to a 7AM time slot if possible. I will post the final time on the website as soon as it is finalised.

Lionel Carmant,
President of the Canadian League Against Epilepsy