Rhythm sponsored satellite symposium at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) 2025

Sunday, 11 May 2025, Málaga - SPAIN

Understanding rare melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) pathway diseases: From insights to precision medicine

About the event

Join us at ECO 2025 on Sunday 11^th May 2025, 16:15–17:45 CEST in Conference room 1, for the Rhythm sponsored satellite symposium entitled 'Understanding rare MC4R pathway diseases: from insights to precision medicine'.

The session will bring the journey of a “patient”, Alex (a fictional patient case study) to life, illustrating the need for strong collaboration between paediatric and adult endocrinologists.

During this session, Professor Luca Busetto (Padova University Hospital, Padova - Italy), Professor Erica van den Akker (Erasmus MC-Sophia Children's Hospital, Rotterdam - The Netherlands) and Professor Karine Clément (Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital and Sorbonne University, Paris - France) will be discussing:

Meet Alex: Impact of living with a rare MC4R pathway disease and the journey to diagnosis
Alex’s need for treatment: Role of precision medicine and the most recent data
The impact of early intervention: Clinical experience with patients suffering from rare MC4R pathway diseases

Day 1 11 May 2025

16:20
Meet Alex: Impact of living with a rare MC4R pathway disease and the journey to diagnosis
by Prof. Luca Busetto
16:35
Alex’s need for treatment: Role of precision medicine and the most recent data
by Prof. Erica van den Akker
17:00
The impact of early intervention: Clinical experience with patients suffering from rare MC4R pathway diseases
by Prof. Karine Clément

Professor Luca Busetto is associate professor of internal medicine at the Department of Medicine of the University of Padova, Italy. He has conducted clinical activity at the EASO COM Center for the Study and the Integrated Management of Obesity – Padova University Hospital. Prof. Busetto is Past President of the Italian Obesity Society (SIO) and former member of the National Board of the Italian Society for Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery (SICOb). He is a member of the standing Expert Panel of the Italian National Health Institute (ISS) for the endocrine-metabolic area.

Prof. Luca Busetto

Padova University Hospital, Padova, Italy

Erica van den Akker is a professor of Paediatric Endocrinology and Head of the Division of Paediatric Endocrinology at Erasmus University Medical Centre Sophia Children’s Hospital and lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She co-founded the Obesity Clinic CGG, an EASO-accredited Centre of Management of diagnosis and treatment of obesity in children and adults, and an NFU-accredited expertise centre for genetic obesity, which is a national referral centre for patients with genetic obesity. She chairs the global guideline project group on endocrine aspects of diagnostics & treatment for childhood obesity and coordinates the ESPE Obesity Working Group. She is a steering committee member for the Growth and Obesity group of the EndoERN.

Prof. Erica van den Akker

Erasmus University Medical Centre, The Netherlands

Prof. Karine Clément is a full professor of nutrition in the Nutrition department at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital and Sorbonne University, France. She is also President of the French Association for the Study of Obesity (AFERO). She has been involved in genetic aspects of human obesity. She contributed to the identification of monogenic forms of obesity (Leptin receptor and MC4R mutations) and to several genetic risk factors in common obesity. Today, novel therapies can be proposed to patients with genetic obesity.

Prof. Karine Clément

Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital and Sorbonne University, Paris, France

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