Asian and Oceanian Outstanding Achievement Epilepsy Award (AOEA) 2022

Dr Chandra is currently a senior Professor, Dept of Neurosurgery at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi and has established one of the first and largest epilepsy surgery program in India now functioning for the past 25 years. His personal experience is over 3,000 cases of epilepsy surgeries. He established the Centre of Excellence for Epilepsy and MEG resource facility with funding from Dept of Biotechnology (Ministry of Science & Technology, India). This is the first of its kind of facility in India with MEG and dedicated Clinical/research faculty, fellows, PhD’s, and technicians and staff.  He has published over 550 papers, has 12 extramural research grants and 9 patents. He was the main contributor for surgery for surgical arm for the first ever RCT for paediatric epilepsy surgery [Diwedi R et al; N Engl J Med 2017]. The study demonstrated a 10 fold improvement of good outcome for surgery in Children vs medical treatment (77% vs 7%) and also demonstrated better cognitive outcomes for surgery in Children with drug resistant epilepsy. He started the first epilepsy fellowship program in India and has trained over 12 fellows in epilepsy & epilepsy surgery from several parts of India and other countries (Indonesia, Nepal, Kenya). His centre helped in raising awareness towards epilepsy research in India. The MEG facility, the first for India, has performed more than 3000 MEG’s.

His key areas of research include: Study of various bio-markers/receptors in abnormal epileptogenic areas (histone deacetylases alterations, altered kynurenine pathway metabolism, IDH-R132H-FAT1-ROS-HIF-1alfa signalling pathways, mTOR pathway in FCD’s, genome-wide DNA methylation and RNAseq analysis, GABA receptor mediated epileptogenicity, epigenetic regulations, endogenous activity of NMDA receptors, dual networks). He has >100 papers in areas of basic research. He described several new surgical techniques: Endoscopic hemispherotomy, Endoscopic corpus callosotomy with commissurotomy, Robotic guided technique for thermo coagulation for hypothalamic hamartoma, Among the first to introduce SSEG program in India, Robotic thermocoagulative hemispherotomy (ROTCH). He is Co-founder of Ekatwam. This group is involved in providing free medicines and helping poor patients with the cost of epilepsy surgery. This group has now helped > 10,000 patients.