Your Study staff – Netherlands

Meet your 3TR-ABC study staff in the Netherlands

Anke-hilse

Anke-Hilse Maitland van der Zee

Prof.

Anke-Hilse Maitland-Van der Zee was trained as a pharmacist, clinical pharmacologist and epidemiologist. In 2016 she was appointed full-professor in the AmsterdamUMC (Precision Medicine in Respiratory Disease). In 2005 she started to work at Utrecht University, first as assistant Professor and in 2012 as associate Professor in Precision Medicine. From 2003-2005 she worked as a post-doc at the Human Genetics Center of the University of Texas in Houston. Her main research goal is to bring precision medicine into clinical practice. Moving away from using old-fashioned diagnostic labels, but instead using biomarkers to understand biological pathways and optimize therapy for the individual patient accordingly. 

She is among others Principal Investigator of the strategic public private partnership Precision Medicine for More Oxygen (P4O2), president of the Federation Innovative Medicine Research Netherlands (FIGON) and president of the European Association of Systems Medicine (EASYM). She published more than 298 articles.  

Foto professionale - Stefania

Stefania Principa

MD, Ph.D Student

Stefania Principe is a Respiratory Physician currently at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre, where she works as a PhD student. She studied Medical School at the Univeristy of Palermo, in Italy. During her studies, she gained experience abroad in Germany and the Netherlands where she decided to start her PhD on precision medicine. She graduated with honors in 2015, after which she started her residency training in Respiratory Medicine at the Pulmonology Department at the University Hospital of Palermo (Italy). She concluded her training with honors in November 2020.  She awarded two times the SIP/IRS Research Fellowship, a prize that promote the innovation and the research exchange, with projects on the implication of breathomics in asthma and chronic respiratory diseases

She is involved in many international consortium and projects, especially focused on precision medicine. She is an active member of the 3TR – ABC Study, part of the 3TR Consortium, that will contribute to unravel immunological mechanisms responsible for insufficient treatment response and to identify novel treatment targets. She is also part of the so-called “rasing stars” of the Severe Heterogeneous Asthma Research collaborators Patients-centered (SHARP) leading and coordinating a project that aims to explore differences between the real-life clinical care for severe asthma patients eligible to biological therapies and the population represented in clinical trials.  In Italy, she works as a Respiratory Physician at the University Hospital Policlinico “Paolo Giaccone” of Palermo but she in also involved in research leading the project “L’analisi dell’esalato respiratorio nella fenotipizzazione dell’asma grave” which aims to clarify exhaled breath patterns in patients with severe asthma on biological treatments

netherlands-sofi

Sofi Vassileva

MD, Ph.D Student

Sofi Vassileva is a medical doctor and PhD student at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre (Amsterdam UMC). She obtained her Biomedical Sciences degree at Leiden University and her Medicine  degree at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She decided to follow her last clinical internship at the Pulmonary department of the Amsterdam UMC, where she was inspired to continue working in the field of respiratory medicine. Since her background was in Biomedical Sciences, she also had an increased interest in conducting research. Sofi started her PhD in May 2022 under supervision of Prof. Anke-Hilse Maitland-van der Zee, Prof. Jouke Annema and Dr. Peter Bonta. Within this PhD track, she will investigate working mechanisms of current therapies for severe asthma and analyze disease mechanisms through novel imaging techniques. Sofi is incredibly grateful to have been granted this opportunity to work with patients on a daily basis and conduct research.