Michael Sperling, MD: The SLATE Trial in Epilepsy

“The biggest gap that we have in epilepsy right now is that we put someone on medicine with no notion of whether it is going to work or not.”

Michael Sperling, MD, has been involved in a number of clinical studies of different interventions and approaches to treating epilepsy, with the ultimate goal of whittling down the list of unmet needs faced by patients with the condition.

Currently, he’s involved as the national principal investigator in a study of the Visualase MRI-guided laser ablation system for the necrotization or coagulation of epileptogenic foci in patients with intractable mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, called the SLATE trial (NCT02844465). He told NeurologyLive that he is excited to find out exactly how well this intervention fairs, as it is much less invasive than the current interventions being conducted.

As well, the Baldwin Keyes Professor of Neurology and director of the Jefferson Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at Thomas Jefferson University spoke about the need for biomarkers to indicate the success of treatments in epilepsy, as well as the rising interest in gene therapies for the condition. He sat with NeurologyLive in an interview to share his thoughts.