Stephane Haik

Key facts

• His institute profile lists him as MD, PhD, team leader and PI of ALZHEIMER-PRIONS (co-led with an Alzheimer researcher), Director of Research at the CNRS, and coordinator of the national reference centre for unconventional transmissible agents; it shows Inserm as affiliated entity.
• The profile gives a doctorate in 1997, a thesis at Universite Paris V in 2003 and an Inserm Avenir award in 2005.
• His stated research covers pre-mortem diagnosis of prion diseases, characterisation of emerging human prion strains and how strains are selected and spread in the human brain.
• The Paris Brain Institute disease page names the leader of its prion team as coordinator of the national reference centre for prion diseases.
• A September 2025 EMC Neurologie chapter on prion diseases names him as corresponding author, coordinator of the national reference centre for unconventional transmissible agents and co-director of the Alzheimer and prion team (Inserm U1127, CNRS, Sorbonne Universite), with the head of the national CJD reference unit as co-author, both at Pitie-Salpetriere.
• He is first author of the doxycycline trial report (Lancet Neurology, online 8 January 2014): 121 patients with sporadic or genetic CJD were randomised (62 doxycycline, 59 placebo), the trial stopped for futility at the first interim analysis, and survival did not differ (HR 1.1, 95 percent CI 0.8 to 1.7).
• The trial record lists Italian and French registrations (EudraCT 2006-001858-27 and 2007-005553-34) and funding from the Italian medicines agency, the Italian and French health ministries and AIEnP.
• He is the senior (last) author of the 2023 Euro Surveillance report on 25 years of prospective French prion surveillance (1992 to 2016).
• He is the last author of the 2021 Brain paper describing a C. elegans model carrying human E200K PrP; his affiliations there are the Paris Brain Institute and the AP-HP national CJD reference unit, and the record gives his ORCID iD 0000-0001-6022-1188.
• He is a co-author of the 2025 E219K RT-QuIC substrate paper, for which his team supplied characterised sporadic CJD brain samples.
• Europe PMC returns about 120 prion or CJD records under his name, including the 2021 Lancet Neurology sporadic CJD biomarker guidelines, the 2022 validation of revised international criteria, the 2020 second generation RT-QuIC ring trial and the 2019 paper on age at onset and preventive trial design in genetic prion disease.
• Recent work includes a 2024 GWAS of sporadic CJD duration and onset, a 2025 multiomic CJD risk gene study and a 2026 preprint on strain specific clustering of sporadic CJD in France, where he is last author.

Timeline

1. 1997Doctorate.
2. 2005Inserm Avenir award.
3. 2008French doxycycline trial (EudraCT 2007-005553-34, AP-HP sponsor) starts.
4. 2014Doxycycline trial report published online in Lancet Neurology, with him as first author.
5. 2021Brain paper on the C. elegans E200K model published, with him as last author.
6. 202325 year French surveillance report published, with him as senior author.
7. 2025E219K RT-QuIC substrate paper published.
8. 2025EMC Neurologie prion chapter published, naming him as reference centre coordinator.
9. 2026Preprint on strain specific clustering of sporadic CJD in France posted.