I am extremely pleased and honored to introduce Dr. Brenda Banwell as the winner of the 2025 Bernard Sachs Award. Dr. Banwell is a valued colleague and one of the most talented clinicians, scientists, teachers, and administrators it has been my privilege to know throughout my 50-year career.
Dr. Banwell currently serves as Director (Chair) of Pediatrics, Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University, Pediatrician-in-Chief, Co-Director Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, having relocated after serving 12 years as Division Chief of Neurology and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Banwell attended the University of Western Ontario (UWO, London, Ontario, Canada) for two years of undergraduate education before matriculating into UWO Schulich Medical School. Dr. Banwell pursued a residency in Pediatrics at UWO where she was inspired by Dr. Simon Levin to pursue child neurology and so took her Child Neurology training at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and the University of Toronto. She then did a fellowship in neuromuscular diseases at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN).
I was recruited to SickKids and the University of Toronto as Neurology Division Head in 1994 and began my new job in January 1996. Dr. Banwell was my Chief Resident, and when I met her soon after I arrived in Toronto, I was simply blown away by her intellect, clinical abilities for one so young, drive, and focus. As part of taking the position at SickKids, I had negotiated several faculty positions to build the Division. To understand what a huge talent I found Dr. Banwell, I offered her my very first faculty position when she was still a chief resident with a two-year fellowship commitment before she could start. I asked Dr. Banwell to return to SickKids at the completion of her fellowship at Mayo as part of the SickKids staff with her first academic appointment as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology at the University of Toronto.
To our great good fortune and that of all of us at the Hospital for Sick Children and the academic community at the University of Toronto, Dr. Banwell agreed.
Dr. Banwell arrived at SickKids in 1999 to assume her new position and immediately became the go-to doc for consultation for children with complex neuromuscular diseases of all types. She was expert in interpreting muscle pathology, as well. However, Dr. Robert Haslam, the retiring Head of the Department of Pediatrics at SickKids at the time, asked Dr. Banwell to look after five children with multiple sclerosis [MS]. She agreed, and the world of Pediatric Neuroinflammatory Disease and Pediatric MS was changed forever.
Despite no formal fellowship training in neuroimmune disorders, Dr. Banwell, along with nurse Lynn MacMillan and nurse specialist Jennifer Boyd, established the Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis program at the Hospital for Sick Children in 1999. The entire treatment literature on the day that Dr. Banwell’s MS clinic at SickKids opened was a single case report regarding use of interferon beta 1b in an 8-year-old boy in the UK. The diagnosis of MS was not even formally possible, as the criteria excluded children at that time. Dr. Banwell has never, ever accepted saying “I don’t know” unless the second half of the sentence is “but we are going to do everything we can to figure it out.’ That mantra defines Dr. Banwell and her approach to medicine.
Over the past 25 years, Dr. Banwell established the Canadian Pediatric Demyelinating Disease Network, a prospective study that has substantially contributed to understanding of the clinical, MRI, biological, epidemiological, and outcomes of pediatric multiple sclerosis and related disorders. Dr. Banwell has published over 350 manuscripts, 30 book chapters, and has served or serves as Chair of the International Pediatric Multiple Sclerosis Study Group and the International MOGAD Research Group. Her seminal contributions to the domain of Pediatric
Neuroinflammatory Disease and Pediatric MS may be summarized as follows:
In 2004, Dr. Banwell, the senior author, and colleagues reported for the first time data to suggest an association between EBV infection and pediatric MS. Specifically, they demonstrated that serological evidence for remote EBV infection was present in 83% of pediatric MS patients, compared with 42% of emergency department and healthy controls (P<.001) [Suad A, et al. JAMA 2004;291:1875-9].
In 2011, Dr. Banwell and colleagues published the largest study of pediatric demyelination that remains the most comprehensive analysis of risk determinants and clinical features in an incident cohort of demyelination in children. Specifically, Dr. Banwell and colleagues showed that the risk of multiple sclerosis in children can be stratified by presence of RB1*15 alleles, remote Epstein-Barr virus infection, and low serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations. Similar to previous studies in adults, brain lesions detected on MRI and CSF oligoclonal bands in children are probable precursors to the clinical onset of multiple sclerosis. Children with a normal MRI are very likely to have a monophasic illness [Banwell B, et al. Lancet Neurology 2011; 10:436-45].
In 2018, Dr. Banwell was an important participant in a landmark paper, which provided for the critically important inclusion of pediatric patients in diagnostic criteria for MS. This had been preceded by the 2010 criteria, in which Dr. Banwell was also part of developing and which was the first inclusion of pediatric patients in international MS diagnostic criteria [Thompson AH, et al., Lancet Neurology 2018;17: 162-173].
In 2023, Dr. Banwell was invited to lead an international effort that convened virtually for 72 weeks with resultant publication of important proposed criteria as well as comprehensive comparative tables and imaging features of myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody-associated disease [MOGAD]. These proposed diagnostic criteria have the potential to improve identification of individuals with MOGAD, which is essential to define long-term clinical outcomes, refine inclusion criteria for clinical trials, and identify predictors of a relapsing versus a monophasic disease course [Lancet Neurol 2023;22:268-282].
Dr. Banwell has received numerous awards and invited professorships throughout her career, including Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, the Sidney Carter Award from the American Academy of Neurology, and the European Committee on the Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis Award.
Dr. Banwell has volunteered her time to serve on numerous community groups on behalf of the Canadian and US National MS Societies and as the Medical Director of Muscular Dystrophy Canada for several years. Dr. Banwell also dedicates considerable time as the Chair of the Medical & Scientific Advisory Board of the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation (MSIF), which represents all MS societies worldwide.
Dr. Banwell has a long history of being a strong advocate for health equity. In this regard, Dr. Banwell is most proud of playing an integral role in advocacy for MS therapies to be included on the Essential Medicines List of the World Health Organization (WHO), which is the key guide used by many countries in deciding which therapies to offer their citizens. The MSIF successfully lobbied to have three MS therapies added to this list, endorsed by the WHO, thus improving the lives of persons living with MS in countries throughout the world [McDonell J. et al. Multiple Sclerosis 26;2020;153-158].
In terms of her professional plans, Dr. Banwell will focus the next five years on reframing her department at Johns Hopkins—creating a Johns Hopkins Pediatric Research Institute—and being an active advocate for child health during these very challenging times. Dr. Banwell wishes to join voices at a national level. She feels strongly that we in medicine, broadly, and pediatrics, specifically, need to invest more deeply in our community conversation. Dr. Banwell is of the belief that we can only be the strongest voice for child health if we are welcomed into parental discussions and can together share a common language.
Dr. Banwell wishes her tenure as Department Chair at Johns Hopkins to be characterized by both an innovative inward set of high-level goals, and equally important, also to be a leader with a clear focus on community-facing goals.
Dr. Banwell was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She met her husband, David Banwell, on her first day of college, and they will celebrate their 33rd wedding anniversary this year. They have three daughters: Emma, a Neonatology Fellow at the University of Utah; Katie, a Pediatric Critical Care Nurse at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; and Sarah, an operations administrator at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Despite being a superb and enormously productive clinician investigator, teacher, administrator, mother, and wife, somehow Dr. Banwell has always found the time to be a dedicated fitness enthusiast. She is a former fitness instructor and was a varsity swimmer for UWO – back in the day, as they say.