After an extraordinary, 20-year career as chairman of the University of Maryland Department of Neurology, Dr. Kenneth P. Johnson stepped down from the chairman’s role on December 1st. During those two decades, he transformed a very small department with few resources into a thriving one whose 35 faculty members are known internationally for innovative research and excellent patient care.

At the same time, Dr. Johnson has pursued his special interest—finding treatments for multiple sclerosis. Today, he is recognized as one of the persons most responsible for the development of the first FDA-approved treatments to slow the progression of multiple sclerosis. Dr. Johnson works with a dedicated group of professionals and staff—most of whom have been with him for more than ten years. They describe him as a humble, low-key person with the highest integrity. They will tell you that he has a wonderful, dry sense of humor, and he can easily laugh at himself. Yet he is also known as an inspiring leader with good political skills who has turned challenges into opportunities and problems into achievements.

Sowing the Seeds
Dr. Johnson grew up in Jamestown, New York. His mother was a nurse, and his father was an engineer. His sister went into nursing, but Dr. Johnson became the first physician in his family. He and his wife, Jackie, have been married for more than 40 years.

Early in his career, he excelled in neuroscience research. It was in medical school at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pa., that he became interested in infectious diseases. After earning his MD degree, Dr. Johnson did residency training at Buffalo General Hospital in Buffalo, N.Y. He completed training in neurology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, first as a resident at University Hospitals of Cleveland and then as a fellow in neurovirology, studying how viruses affect the nervous system.

At that time, Dr. Johnson developed an interest in helping MS patients. “These were mainly young people suddenly facing an unknown future. The disease starts when people are in the prime of life, and it is a devastating diagnosis,” he says. Also then, in the 1960s, the idea was circulating that viruses could be involved in MS, providing an opportunity to blend his clinical and research interests.

Dr. Johnson moved to San Francisco in 1974, where he joined the neurology service at the Veterans Administration Medical Center and became a professor of neurology and pathology at the University of California—San Francisco. He set up a neurovirology laboratory and a research program to examine the relationship between viruses and multiple sclerosis.

It was there, in 1976, when Dr. Hillel Panitch joined Dr. Johnson for a collaborative relationship that would last for 25 years. “Ken worked to develop a diagnostic test for MS from spinal fluid,” says Dr. Panitch. “And that was his first major contribution. The test provided a quick, reliable way to confirm the diagnosis.”

Finding effective treatments for MS was, and still is, a huge challenge because they need to be substances that patients can tolerate for many years without having significant side effects. While steroids are helpful, they should not be taken long-term.

During the ’70s, Dr. Panitch worked with Dr. Johnson on one of the first clinical trials ever conducted to test a treatment for MS. Researchers believed that if MS were a viral disease, then interferon, which interferes with the ability of viruses to reproduce, might be promising. “Interferon at the time was a wonder drug in search of a disease. It was being studied for everything from the common cold to encephalitis,” says Dr. Panitch.

In 1979, the National MS Society funded the first study, involving 24 patients. They used natural human interferon from white blood cells supplied by Finland’s Red Cross Blood Bank. “With that study, we were on the road to new treatments for MS, and we are still on that road,” says Dr. Johnson. The first drug they tested, alpha interferon, did not show any benefit. The next one, gamma interferon, turned out to be a potent stimulator of new disease activity. But that work provided important clues about the role of immune activity in causing MS attacks, and it gave Dr. Johnson and his colleagues insight on new directions to pursue to inhibit the disease.
Next, they began to study beta interferon, a drug that turned out to be successful in preventing MS attacks and reducing damage in the brain. Dr. Johnson was a key investigator in the early studies and later in the pivotal clinical trial that led to FDA approval of Betaseron in 1993. It was a milestone—the first drug ever approved specifically to treat MS by changing the natural course of the disease.

But Dr. Johnson did not stop there. He also led the research on a compound called Copolymer 1, a drug that is even more specific for MS because it affects part of the immune system that acts against myelin in the brain. He brought a small Israeli drug company, TEVA, together with the FDA and the National MS Society, in order that the research could move ahead. Dr. Johnson developed the protocol and recruited 11 medical centers to participate in a phase III trial. In 1996, the FDA approved the drug, now called Copaxone.

Today, more than 100,000 U.S. residents with relapsing/remitting MS take Betaseron, Copaxone, or a third drug approved in recent years, Avonex. But there is no cure; so the research continues to test new compounds and combinations of existing drugs.

Having the Right Stuff
People who have known Dr. Johnson for many years credit him with having excellent political skills to maintain good relationships with colleagues at other institutions, government researchers and those in the pharmaceutical industry. Those skills have enabled him to develop networks of researchers, both for collaboration on multi-center studies and to learn of new research opportunities for his faculty.

Back in 1981, the first interferon study was only half completed when the University of Maryland offered Dr. Johnson the position of chairman of neurology. Soon after he moved to Baltimore, Dr. Panitch joined him, and they continued their research on interferons.

The neurology department was small, with fewer than ten faculty. The Bressler Research Building had recently opened. Coming from the San Francisco VA Hospital, where there was a lot of support for research, Dr. Johnson saw the potential to create a major research program at the Baltimore VA hospital to gain another essential funding source for research.

“He turned the Baltimore VA into a research-oriented facility—a major accomplishment. It wouldn’t have happened without Ken’s leadership to integrate it as a true academic facility along with its mission of patient care and teaching. Today, it ranks among the very top VA hospitals nationally in terms of competitive research dollars,” says Dr. Paul Fishman, a professor of neurology at Maryland who was recruited from New York by Dr. Johnson in 1983.

“Ken had a good reputation as an established neurologist and scientist in San Francisco. He had a lot going for him in that wonderful city, and I thought that the University of Maryland must have made him a lot of promises to get him to move to Baltimore. So, I figured that great things would happen there.”

Indeed, Dr. Fishman says Dr. Johnson made dramatic changes to expand the neurology department’s size, faculty and funding. And he incorporated the department of rehabilitation medicine into the department of neurology. The University of Maryland became one of the first institutions to do that, and it led to advances in finding the best treatment methods and improved patient care.

Weiner Assumed Neurology Post on December 1 William J. Weiner, MD, a nationally recognized leader in research and treatment of Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders, has been named chairman of the department of neurology at the medical school and chief of neurology at the medical center. Dr. Weiner joined Maryland a year ago as a professor of neurology and director of a new service, the University of Maryland Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Program. In addition to publishing 15 neurology text books and more than 175 professional articles, Dr. Weiner is co-author of a new book for consumers, Parkinson’s Disease: A Complete Guide for Patients and Families. The book is a comprehensive resource for understanding the medical, emotional and practical challenges of life with Parkinson’s disease. A native of Chicago, Dr. Weiner received his MD from the University of Illinois College of Medicine. He did residency training in neurology at the University of Minnesota and at Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. Dr. Weiner succeeds Dr. Kenneth Johnson and ascended to the post on December 1, 2001. “The University of Maryland Department of Neurology is very strong with many good clinicians and researchers, due to the excellent leadership of Dr. Kenneth Johnson,” says Dr. Weiner. “I hope to further improve clinical services, including the development of our movement disorders program, and begin a functional neurosurgical program in collaboration with the department of neurosurgery. I would also like to expand our research program, especially with translational research that allows us to bring promising new therapies to patients with movement disorders, epilepsy, stroke, neuromuscular disease and cancers of the nervous system,” he adds. Dr. Weiner also wants to bring a neuro-intensivist to the medical center to care for hospitalized patients with serious neurological problems that require intensive care. And, he plans to expand the sleep disorders program and enhance rehabilitation services. “We have many outstanding, talented neurologists here, and I would like to further increase their national profile. My goal is for us to become known as a place where patients come for highly specialized care and where clinical and basic researchers are advancing knowledge and developing better treatments for neurological diseases,” says Dr. Weiner.

“Ken recruited experts in rehabilitation and physical medicine to work side by side with neurologists and do combined research projects. He also developed one of the first fellowship programs in rehabilitation medicine for neurologists,” Dr. Fishman adds.

“Rehabilitation has always been very important here, especially because of the Shock Trauma Center,” says Dr. Johnson. “But it was a challenge to develop this program.” However, he identified an opportunity, first at Montebello Hospital, which was a state-run facility, and later at Kernan Hosptial, which was acquired by the University of Maryland Medical System and developed into a large, state-of-the-art regional leader in rehabilitation. Today, Maryland has a comprehensive network to provide services for patients at every stage in the rehabilitation process.

When he accepted the chairman’s job in 1981, Dr. Johnson wanted to develop a strong neurology residency. It took a few years, but it became known as an excellent place for training. He also made it a priority to find good African-American residents to join the program, a goal he was able to achieve with minority representation in each group of residents.

Dr. Johnson recruited talented physicians and researchers to create a top notch epilepsy program, offering a full range of diagnostic services and therapies. The stroke program has also flourished under Dr. Johnson’s leadership, with leading research in stroke prevention and treatment, and more recently with one of the region’s first comprehensive “brain attack” centers for acute stroke intervention.

“We always have had a strong research program in Parkinson’s Disease and movement disorders with Dr. Fishman. It has expanded greatly with the recruitment last year of Dr. William Weiner and Dr. Lisa Shulman. We are rapidly becoming the major program in Parkinson’s disease in this region” says Dr. Johnson. In fact, Dr. Weiner has now succeeded Dr. Johnson as chairman of the department of neurology.

Continuing the Fight
But Dr. Johnson remains an important presence at Maryland. He continues to head the Maryland Center for MS, which he founded, caring for people with MS and doing research on new approaches to treat—and perhaps one day cure—that devastating disease.

The center, which cares for 17 hundred patients each year, provides a full array of services to enhance the quality of life for patients. Nurses, physical therapists, social workers, ophthalmologists and psychologists are all part of the team.

“What drives Ken is a sense of wanting to help people with neurological problems, especially MS. He has been a wonderful role model for me and lots of other people. He is careful, thoughtful, and a soft-spoken but effective leader,” says Dr. Panitch, who moved to the University of Vermont last year to head an MS center there.

Of all of the issues he had to face as chairman, Dr. Johnson says the biggest challenge was navigating the financial changes in health care over the years to anticipate where the marketplace was heading and ensure adequate funding for the department of neurology. That meant looking for additional sources of revenue from the NIH, the VA and private industry to supplement what the department could obtain from the medical school and reimbursement from patient care activities.

“I’ve learned a lot from Ken over the last 16 years,” says Bryan Soronson, the neurology department administrator. “He looks at things strategically and finds creative solutions. He is proactive and has the utmost integrity.”

Dr. Johnson was honored for his 20 years of accomplishments as chairman of neurology at Maryland at a gala celebration this past fall at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. The event was part of an educational conference that drew leaders in neurology from around the world. In addition to his continued work at the Maryland Center for MS, Dr. Johnson is now helping to build a new organization, called America’s Committee for Treatment and Research in MS. The group will hold a conference in Baltimore in September, 2002 for two thousand of the top leaders in MS research and treatment from throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Mary Rose, his assistant for the past 16 years, calls Dr. Johnson her hero. “He is very patient and compassionate. He believes strongly in his work, and his patients are devoted to him. When they are first diagnosed with MS, it is devastating, but he reassures them that they can continue to enjoy life, have children, pursue their careers and make their dreams come true.” 

 

 

Back | Home