Abstract

Chronic diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and infectious/auto-immune disorders severely impact many millions of people, including people in the industrialized world. The Center for Translational Molecular Medicine (CTMM) aims to significantly reduce the burden of chronic diseases and improve the quality of life for patients who have to live with them.
As a young public-private partnership based in The Netherlands, CTMM strives to become a leader in innovating Molecular Diagnostics and Molecular Imaging technologies. Together, these emerging technologies will enable doctors to make earlier and more precise diagnoses and to design "personalized" treatments, which are targeted at smaller patient groups or individual patients.
Using public and private funds, CTMM works by inviting, assessing and funding multidisciplinary translational research projects in which Dutch universities, public research centers and industry closely collaborate. Already eight university medical centers, several universities and more than eighty companies have teamed up to deliver new molecular medicinal products to patients’ bedsides sooner.

These private-public consortia provide a broad spectrum of job opportunities for all kinds of professionals in the life sciences (http://www.ctmm.nl/).

Curriculum Vitae

Heidi Hamers
Managing Director, CTMM

Heidi Hamers studied physics at the Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany. After a research period at the State University at Stony Brook, NY, USA, she received her PhD at the department of Theoretical Nuclear Physics at the Leibniz University. In 1986 she started her career in research management. Initially as research co-ordinator (infrared satellite experiment, Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg), later as head of an industrial R&D department (radiotherapy planning, Nucletron, The Netherlands). From 1999 – 2007 she worked at Wageningen University and Research Center (WUR) where she started as head of the department of Soil and Landuse. At WUR, she was actively involved in the integration process of applied research departments with university groups and finally acted as director of the Soil Science Center.  In November 2007 she was appointed Managing Director of CTMM.

Curriculum Vitae

Johannes W J Bijlsma, MD, PhD  
Principal Investigator of TRACER
Professor of Rheumatology, University Utrecht        

Hans Bijlsma studied medicine in Utrecht, became district medical officer in Tanzania, followed his training as internist and rheumatologist again in Utrecht and spent some additional training time in London UK. He wrote his thesis on "hormones and bones"(1983). Since 1989 he is head of the department of rheumatology & clinical immunology at the UMCUtrecht. Research interests are the immunology of different rheumatic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis. He is member of the Executive of the European League Against Rheumatism.