Stephen Hauser, MD

Dr. Hauser is a Professor of Neurology as well as Director of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, specializing in immune mechanisms and multiple sclerosis. Dr. Hauser trained in internal medicine at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, in neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and in immunology at Harvard Medical School and the Institute Pasteur in Paris, France, and was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School before moving to UCSF. Dr. Hauser is part of the team that identified that humoral immune mechanisms are important in the pathogenesis of MS lesions, leading to the development of B-cell based therapies for MS and his general recognition as “the father of B cell depletion” for the treatment of autoimmune disease. He led a large-scale clinical trial with rituximab, a chimeric monoclonal antibody that depletes CD20+ B cells, and demonstrated robust efficacy in relapsing remitting MS. A second trial in primary progressive MS reported in 2009 that rituximab may be similarly effective in patients with primary progressive MS who also have evidence of ongoing inflammatory CNS disease. More recently, a third clinical trial with a fully humanized anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody, ocrelizumab, replicated the results of the rituximab trial in relapsing remitting MS. With the MS Bioscreen project, Hauser has pioneered precision medicine for complex diseases like MS, creating an “actionable digital growth-chart for complex traits”. Dr. Hauser has received a number of prestigious awards for his work including the 2013 Charcot Award from the Multiple Sclerosis International Federation, the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award, and the John-Dystel Prize for Multiple Sclerosis Research. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Association of American Physicians and the author of “The Face Laughs While the Brain Cries: The Education of a Doctor” by St. Martin’s Press.