Marcus Maurer, MD (1966–2024)

It is astonishingly and profoundly sad that Professor Marcus Maurer has been lost since 31 July 2024, at the age of 58. He went for a hike by himself on holiday with his family in mountains in Italy and never came back to us. Marcus was born in Kaufbeuren, Germany in 1966. He studied medicine at the Medical Schools of Mainz and Berlin, and was granted an MD from Freie Universtét Berlin. He was certificated as a dermatologist (2001) and allergologist (2003), and trained as a postdoctoral fellow in experimental pathology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston (1996–1999). He moved to Berlin in 2004 as an assistant professor at the Allergie-Centrum-Charitié – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and was appointed as Director of Research in the Department of Dermatology and Allergy at Charitié in 2007. He then vigorously expanded his activities not only in clinical and basic sciences in dermatology, allergy, and clinical immunology, but also in patient advocacies and international networks of physicians and scientists. He worked extremely hard and was always friendly, cheerful, and inspiring to everybody, speaking very clear and plain English. He continuously expanded his ideas and published more than 660 peer-reviewed papers, 40 books, and book chapters, which are superb, but do not adequately describe his enormous achievements. He increased the posts in his clinic and laboratory in Charitié, and assembled many physicians, scientists, and students to work with him. There are many excellent experts in Marcus’ field of interest, which includes urticaria, hereditary angioedema, mast cell biology, and disorders, but it is rare to find those who are distinguished in both clinical practice and basic science. Marcus was an excellent scientist and also a good physician, treating many patients himself. Moreover, he constructed a large framework for clinical studies of urticaria and angioedema. In 2000, the classification of urticaria was not yet well established. Marcus and his colleagues proposed the use of “spontaneous” instead of “idiopathic” for urticaria that develops wheals daily without apparent cause or triggers, based on the 2nd International Consensus Meeting on Urticaria held in 2004.1 I first worked with Marcus and many other international experts of urticaria to clarify unmet needs for future work for urticaria. An article published as the outcome of that collaboration became one of the most frequently referred to articles on the subject.2 Another great achievement of his was the establishment of way to evaluate urticaria both in disease severity and in patient reported outcome measures (PROMs). Symptoms of urticaria are rather simple, consisting of wheals, erythema, and itch, but the size, number, and duration of individual eruptions and itching are largely variable and not necessarily correlated to each other. Moreover, skin reactions provoked by various stimuli also vary among subtypes of urticaria. Previously, many clinical trials were conducted, but the criteria for subject inclusion and the methods of severity evaluation were not aligned. Thus, the results of these studies cannot be directly compared. Marcus first studied the relationship between clinical parameters of chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) and established the Urticaria Activity Score of 7 days (UAS7), and the Angioedema Activity Score (AAS). In addition, he developed and/or contributed to the development of a set of PROMs with validation, including Chronic Urticaria Quality of Life Questionnaire (CU-Q2oL), Angioedema quality of life questionnaire (AE-QoL), A specific HRQoL questionnaire for adult patients with C1-INH-HAE (HAE-QoL), and the Urticaria Control Test (UCT), which are now widely employed in many international and/or domestic clinical studies. More recently, Marcus established diagnostic criteria and PROMs for chronic inducible urticarias and developed devices/equipment for these urticaria subtypes. Using these tools for physicians who treat urticaria, he launched the Urticaria Centers of Reference and Excellence (UCARE) and a registry for urticaria (CURE) in 2016, working with his two close colleagues, Professor Torsten Zuberbier in Charitié (Germany) and Professor Ana Gimenez-Arnau in Barcelona (Spain). As of August in 2024, 184 centers in 48 countries are certified as UCARE. They are currently conducting nine, planning eight, and have completed nine collaborative projects, and are biennially assembling. Marcus’ activities have inspired, united, and integrated so many physicians and scientists, some of whom were in small groups seeing a limited number of patients, but are now members of a large community, working together and publish their work as prestigious articles gathering data in the community. The loss of him during his active career leaves a huge void not only in research and clinical practice, but also in human relationships. Everybody liked him, loved him, and will miss him forever. We swear that we will succeed in his wishes and efforts for patients and medical sciences. May he rest in peace.