Skip to main content
ASHI 51st Annual Meeting Main banner

Emmanuel Mignot, MD, PhD

Professor
Stanford University
Palo Alto, California

Dr. Mignot is a Craig Reynolds Professor of Sleep Medicine at Stanford University. He discovered that the cause of human narcolepsy is the loss of ~70,000 orexin/hypocretin neurons within the posterior hypothalamus. In the process, he was the first to positionally clone a disease gene in the dog (HCRTR2 mutations causing canine narcolepsy). This discovery led to the realization that orexin/hypocretin is a key sleep regulator, a concept now leading to novel therapies, orexin antagonists as insomnia therapies and agonists for narcolepsy and hypersomnia. He also characterized pharmacologic mechanisms of existing narcolepsy medications and established measurement of cerebrospinal fluid hypocretin-1 as a new diagnostic tool for narcolepsy. Dr. Mignot also identified HLA-DQB0602, T-cell receptor genes, and other immune polymorphisms as narcolepsy susceptibility genes across ethnic groups, showing they act together to promote a selective autoimmune process. Dr. Mignot also found that the autoimmune process is triggered by specific flu strains but not others. His expertise extends beyond narcolepsy; for example, he studies autoimmune encephalitis and neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Mignot is a member of the National Academies of Sciences and Medicine and a recipient of the 2023 breakthrough prize.

Presentation(s):