Professor Dirk Dressler, Head of the Movement Disorders Section at Hannover Medical School in Hanover, Germany, is retiring from his position as Co-Director of Tongji University’s Botulinum Toxin Research Centre (BTRC) in Shanghai, China. The BTRC is a joint initiative between Professor Dressler and Professor Lingjing Jin, who have collaborated extensively in the field of movement disorders for many years.

The centre formally began operations in 2021. Its main objective is to combine clinical and basic research in the field of botulinum toxins, with a particular focus on their translational aspects. As part of this initiative, a botulinum toxin treatment centre for all major indications was set up at Tongji’s facilities in Shanghai. It is now recognised as one of the reference centres for botulinum toxin therapy in China. ‘The BTRC and our collaboration between Hannover Medical School and Tongji University has been a great success story’, said Dressler. ‘Despite all the difficulties caused by the COVID pandemic, we managed to publish an impressive 19 scientific papers so far,’ he said. Ten of these were based on joint projects, five of which focused on basic and clinical pharmacology of botulinum toxin therapy. Another five papers focused on movement disorders treated with BT. Main Chinese author was Dr Lizhen Pan who received her neurological doctorate of Hannover Medical School as part of this project.

‘With my upcoming retirement from Hannover Medical School I will reduce my operational activities in academics to finally have a bit more time for my private activities – including my olive farm in Tuscany’, Dressler smiles.