Ellen Gelpi

Key facts

• The MedUni Wien division page lists Research Group Gelpi, led by Priv.-Doz. Dr. Ellen Gelpi-Mantius, PhD, working on neurodegenerative disease including prion disorders, the spread of pathology and support for biomarker development, with methods that include immunohistochemistry, electron microscopy, genetics, ELISA and RT-QuIC.
• The same page states that her group runs OERPE on behalf of the federal ministry responsible for health.
• She was first author of the 2008 Neuroepidemiology study of CJD in Austria, written from the Institute of Neurology and OERPE in Vienna, which reported mean yearly mortality of 1.39 per million from 1996 to mid 2006 and 82.7 percent sensitivity and 80.0 percent specificity of the clinical criteria for probable CJD against autopsy.
• She was first author of the August 2022 Acta Neuropathologica Communications paper describing six sporadic CJD cases with codon 129 MV and PrPSc type 1 that resembled VV1 (named VM1), with a mean duration of 20.5 months against 3.5 months for MM1 and MV1; Piero Parchi was last author and Isidro Ferrer a co-author.
• On the 2022 VM1 paper she gave two affiliations, the Vienna division with OERPE and the Neurological Tissue Bank of the Biobank-Hospital Clinic-IDIBAPS in Barcelona.
• Her 2012 first author case report of an atypical sCJD-MM phenotype with kuru-type plaques lists only the Barcelona Neurological Tissue Bank as affiliation, and a Hospital Clinic staff profile says a pathologist now coordinating prion disease autopsies there trained in that bank under her.
• She was second author of a 2015 Barcelona brain bank series of 160 donors with rapidly progressive dementia, in which prion disease was found in 67 percent and clinical and pathological diagnoses agreed in 94 percent of prion cases.
• She co-authored the 2012 consensus classification of human prion disease histotypes, an inter-rater study among surveillance centres in Europe and the USA led by Parchi.
• Her Vienna work goes back at least to 2004, when she co-wrote the report on ten years of European Commission funded concerted actions on prion neuropathology, and 2005, when she first-authored a case of prion disease with a 144 bp PRNP insertion from the Vienna Institute of Neurology.
• She is a co-author of the 2022 European CJD surveillance network study in which 13 laboratories in 11 countries tested the same CSF samples by RT-QuIC with strong agreement, part funded by ECDC.
• Other prion co-authorships include the 2006 eleven country diagnostic pattern study, the 2021 study of oligodendroglial PrP in the M2C type (first author), the 2024 sCJD duration GWAS, the 2025 Brain multiomic CJD risk gene paper and the 2025 JAMA Neurology prodromal mood study.
• A January 2024 Navarrabiomed news item describes her as head of the neurodegenerative diseases area at the Institute of Neuropathology of the Vienna General Hospital, advising on donated brain cases in Navarre.
• Her papers carry ORCID 0000-0003-2948-4187; the public ORCID record lists no employment history.

Timeline

1. 2004Co-author of the report on ten years of EC funded concerted actions on prion neuropathology.
2. 2005First author case report of prion disease with a 144 bp insertion, Vienna Institute of Neurology.
3. 2006Co-author of the eleven country diagnostic pattern study.
4. 2008First author autopsy-controlled study of CJD in Austria published online.
5. 2012Co-author of the European and US consensus classification of prion histotypes.
6. 2012First author sCJD-MM case report with a Barcelona Neurological Tissue Bank affiliation.
7. 2015Barcelona brain bank series on rapidly progressive dementia published online.
8. 2021First author M2C oligodendroglial PrP paper with MedUni Wien and OERPE affiliations.
9. 2022European network CSF RT-QuIC concordance study published online.
10. 2022First author VM1 subtype paper published online.
11. 2024Neuropathology case advice and seminar at Navarrabiomed.