Newcastle University

Annemieke Aartsma-Rus has started a visiting professorship at the Institute of Genetic Medicine as of January 1st.

Professor Aartsma-Rus has been involved in developing antisense-mediated exon skipping as a potential therapy for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy since 2000 at the Leiden University Medical Centre. She has worked on both proof-of-concept studies in patient-derived cell cultures and is working on preclinical studies in animal models to further optimize this approach towards clinical application (in collaboration with Prosensa Therapeutics and GlaxoSmithKline).

At Newcastle University Prof Aartsma-Rus will collaborate with the teams of Profs Bushby, Lochmuller and Straub to further the exon skipping approach and strengthen the existing collaboration between the Leiden University Medical Centre and Newcastle University on the identification of serum biomarkers to be used for therapeutic monitoring. Prof Aartsma-Rus intends to visit Newcastle 5 times this year, which will also allow her in her duties as vice-chair of the TREAT-NMD alliance.