LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Dr Per Ljungman, MD, PhD
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, Recipient of the
2022 ICHS Lifetime Achievement Award

Dr Ljungman is Professor emeritus in the Division of Hematology, Dept. of Medicine Huddinge, and a Senior physician in the Department of Cellular Therapy and Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden.

Please allow me to portrait some aspects of Per’s outstanding performance as clinician and as clinical scientists over the last 4 decades that I had the pleasure of witnessing: My first contact with Per was in the early 1990s when Dr Pierre Reusser invited Per Ljungman to our weekly infectious disease and hematology Seminar in Basel. Per and Pierre had shared a common time at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC), a world-leading center in transplantation medicine and hematology and specifically in tackling life-threatening infections, both back then as much as it is now. This included cytomegalovirus (CMV) for obvious reasons. Per’s presentation was exemplary, brilliant, rewarding, raising in less than 45 min the bar of all aspects of our knowledge on clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic aspects of CMV.

My next encounter with Per was the 5th International Cytomegalovirus Conference in Stockholm (Sweden), May 21– 24, 1995, which Per had organized and which documented his role as a world leader in CMV as well as in clinical science. This was my first conference dedicated solely to one virus with a comprehensive program over 4 full days, presenting the latest cutting edge-knowledge at that time on basic CMV virology, molecular virology, pathogenesis, cell culture and animal models, diagnostic modalities, primary infections, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, transplantation, reactivation, clinical impact, antiviral therapies and cumulated in the presentation of Dr Stan Riddell from the FHCRC on first clinical results of CMV-specific adoptive T cell transfer. I strongly felt that this conference reflected the most amazing and rewarding way of how to comprehensively approach, grasp and eventually deal with an infectious agent. Indeed, Per has made unmatched contributions since, how to best tackle CMV and which include a most recent antiviral drug study that defined a new standard in alloHCT.

Similarly, in a conference focusing on viral infections in alloHCT in 2003 at the MD Anderson Cancer Research Center in Houston, TX (USA), Per gave an outstanding presentation to this enormously professional and very dedicated audience. Per stood out as brilliant teacher, consultant, unmatched as highly esteemed colleague, being up-to-date, critical, realistic but at the same time enthusiastic and visionary. Since then, I have witnessed many other national and international conferences around the globe where organizers, chairs and attending audiences were fortunate and honored to have Per contribute and effectively raise the educational excellence of the respective event.

Dissemination of knowledge and excellence has been a trademark of Per’s work throughout his professional life which is documented in his contributions to several standard reference textbooks and includes the one that he organized himself as editor (“Transplant Infections” 4th Edition), which hopefully will be updated as 5th Edition in the near future. However, as the clinical science is not standing still, the understanding of infectious agents, and especially other viruses is ever increasing. Per met this continuously evolving challenge as a major driving force of the Infectious Disease Working Party (IDWP) of the European Bone Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) organization over many years. Per established European as well as international collaborations, publishing original data generated by EBMT collaborations as well as by international clinical studies mapping the epidemiology and risk factors of infections, with a not so secret love for viruses and vaccinations, and new antiviral agents, typically in prestigious journals like Lancet, NEJM, and Blood. His voice is heard, his critical thought is always highly valued, in panel or one on-one discussions, as a long-time Editor of BMT, as a reviewer for high-impact journals, as a critical sparring partner for studies, definitions, end-points, which he combined with an unmatched competence of judging the impact on daily medical practice. This translation of reviewing and grading evidence is really a trademark of Per’s profile and well reflected in his amazing ability of developing guidelines within the European Conference of Infections in Leukaemia (ECIL) together with Catherine Cordonnier and many renowned colleagues, within the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR), with the Committee for Advanced Therapy (CAT) of the European Medical Agency (EMA) and other institutions, but also in his very practical and personalized view of translating the evidence in “…How I treat….” in a well-known high-impact hematology journal.

In view of these multiple activities benchmarking the highest quality, it is truely remarkable that Per Ljungman has been sharing his excellence with us, with the members of the International Immunocompromised Host Society (ICHS). In fact, we are most grateful for his regular contributions at each of the past symposia and for his taking the lead as a council member of the ICHS from 2000-2004, as vice president 2004-2006, as president elect 2006-2008, and as president 2008-2010 effectively organizing the 16th ICHS Symposium in 2010.