Amsterdam institute for Immunology and Infectious Diseases

Professor of Precision Medicine in Respiratory Disease Anke-Hilse Maitland-Van der Zee has been nominated for the TOPX Females to Follow Award in the category Guiding Stars. This award aims to give visibility to brilliant females in the Health & Life Sciences sector, and by doing so to inspire the next generation of women to follow in their footsteps. Do you think Anke-Hilse deserves to be one of the Guiding Star finalists at the TOPX Summit on September 22 in Oss? Then vote via this link before August 15.

TOPX Females to Follow Award

TOPX is a platform dedicated to promising and ambitious women in Life Sciences. With the Females to Follow Awards, TOPX aims to honor inspiring women with remarkable careers, provide visibility and celebrate their achievements in the health and life sciences - thus inspiring the next generation of women to follow in their footsteps. Professor Anke-Hilse Maitland-Van der Zee has been nominated for the Guiding Star award, the award for female professionals who have made significant contributions to the health and life sciences sector. In this article you will see a glimpse of all that Anke-Hilse has accomplished in her academic career.

Professional career roadmap

Looking at Anke's professional career, it is immediately clear that she is a real jack-of-all-trades: she was trained as a pharmacist, clinical pharmacologist and epidemiologist. From her studies she moved on to doctoral research and then continued working in academia. Anke-Hilse started her professional career in the USA, from 2003-2005 she worked as a post-doc at the Human Genetics Center of the University of Texas in Houston. In 2005 she started working at Utrecht University, first as Assistant Professor and in 2012 as Associate Professor of Precision Medicine. In 2016, she was appointed Professor of Precision Medicine in Respiratory Disease at Amsterdam UMC.

Paediatric asthma

Maitland-Van der Zee did her PhD research on statins in cardiovascular disease. She ended up in asthma research because a position became available in Utrecht. Maitland-Van der Zee: "Paediatric asthma became an important part of my work in Utrecht, where I was appointed university lecturer and, at a later stage, Associate Professor of Precision Medicine. As a pharmacologist, I am not tied to any disease, I am just very interested in how medicine works. I am able to translate things, and in the research field that is an advantage, to be able to work on different diseases. Right now, within my research, I focus on asthma in children, asthma in adults, COPD, lung cancer and CF, so different diseases. All diseases are interesting, and for me as a clinical pharmacologist, treating diseases is of course my main focus."

Precision Medicine

Anke-Hilse is Professor of Precision Medicine, a direction that focuses on optimizing the effectiveness and safety of treatments for individual patients, taking into account the specific characteristics of an individual. Several factors play a role in determining the diagnosis and best treatment for an individual patient. The same drug may have beneficial effects in one patient and not in another, or cause serious side effects in someone. Therefore, it is important to distinguish between different phenotypes of the disease. Anke-Hilse Maitland-Van der Zee's research focuses on finding biomarkers that can help identify phenotypes, so that you can predict which treatment is most suitable for a patient.

Within Precision Medicine, Maitland-Van der Zee has conducted research on cardiovascular disease, pediatric disease and drug side effects. In recent years, she has increasingly focused on lung diseases, particularly asthma in children. In 2017, Anke-Hilse led two large studies on childhood asthma. In a European study, she used a systems medicine approach to look for biomarkers that define different phenotypes in childhood asthma. In addition, in a clinical study in fifteen Dutch hospitals, she randomized children with asthma between standard treatment and a precision medicine approach.

Currently, within the AMC, Maitland-Van der Zee focuses entirely on Precision Medicine in lung diseases, both in children and adults. Her ultimate goal is the implementation of Precision Medicine in clinical practice. She is leading a team of more than 40 researchers (Assistant Professor, post-docs, MDs, PhD students and junior researchers) at the Department of Respiratory Disease in the Amsterdam UMC, location AMC. She has currently published more than 290 articles in peer reviewed journals.

Extracirricular activities

In addition to her position as full professor, Maitland-Van der Zee is Principal Investigator of the global Pharmacogenomics in Childhood Asthma (PiCA) consortium. President of the Federation Innovative Medicine Research Netherlands (FIGON) and President of the European Association of Systems Medicine (EASYM). She is the Principal Investigator of the large public private partnership P4O2 (Precision Medicine for more Oxygen) sponsored by Health Holland (www.p4o2.org). She was the chair of the European Research Network of Pharmacogenetics from the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Sciences (EUFEPS) for almost 10 years, and is now still a member of the steering committee.

Read about Anke-Hilse and the other nominees here.

You can submit your vote via this link. The deadline for voting is 15 august 2022.

Source: This article is a combination of two articles that previously appeared in Dutch on uva.nl and doq.nl (written by Lennard Bonapart).