The Professor De Winter Award 2025 goes to Anneliene Jonker

Friday 28 November 2025

Anneliene Jonker from the TechMed Centre has received the Prof. Dr. De Winter Award 2025 during the DIES celebration. This annual award recognises the best internationally peer-reviewed conference contribution or article written by a female university (senior) lecturer. Jonker receives the prize for her article “The state-of-the-art of N-of-1 therapies and the IRDiRC N-of-1 development roadmap,” published in the leading journal Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.

What makes this article remarkable is its innovative development roadmap for genetic therapies for ultra-rare diseases. This roadmap offers a concrete and practicable framework: it shows which steps are required to move from laboratory research to clinical application, and which stakeholders need to play which roles. The roadmap plays an active role in policy discussions and has been widely covered in the media.

The research offers hope to millions of patients worldwide suffering from rare or unique genetic conditions for which no treatment previously existed.

The article provides an overview, “the state of the art’’ of therapeutic strategies that can be applied in developing genetic therapies for individual patients. It then presents a systematic analysis of both successful and unsuccessful cases, drawing valuable lessons on effectiveness, risks, and boundary conditions.

The article emerged from a large-scale international collaboration within a task force of the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium (IRDiRC). Researchers, clinicians, patients, companies, regulators and funders from Europe, the United States and beyond contributed. Dr Jonker played a key role in establishing, structuring, and substantively guiding this process.

JURY’S VERDICT

The publication is well written, exceptionally clear, highly instructive, and pleasant to read. It provides a strong overview and a very robust and comprehensive vision for the future. Jonker’s award-winning article was selected from twenty nominations from all five faculties of the University of Twente. In the jury’s assessment, Jonker’s article scored just slightly higher on all points than the articles of the other candidates.

PROFESSOR DE WINTER AWARD

This publication prize for outstanding scientific talent is awarded for the best internationally peer-reviewed conference contribution or journal article. Target group: female assistant and associate professors who, at the time of acceptance of the publication, were employed at the University of Twente. Candidates may nominate their own article or conference contribution. The prize amounts to €3,000 and is awarded annually from the Professor De Winter Fund, a named fund established at the University Fund Twente by the late Mrs De Winter. After her passing in 2013, her heirs, UT alumnus Henk Hoving and his partner Thijs van Reijn, decided to continue the award.

Anneliene Jonker

Anneliene Jonker is an assistant professor in the field of therapies for rare diseases, affiliated with the TechMed Centre and the Faculty of BMS, in the Health Technology and Services Research (HTSR) group. She is also part-time director of Duchenne Parent Project Netherlands.

Jonker obtained her PhD in Cancer Biology in 2014 at the Université Paris XI, where she conducted research into the biological mechanisms underlying cancer. Before that, in 2010, she completed her Master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences at Leiden University. During this master’s programme, she also pursued a History of Medicine track at VU Amsterdam in 2009, broadening her scientific training with a historical and societal perspective on medicine. She laid her academic foundation between 2004 and 2007 at University College Roosevelt in Middelburg, where she completed a Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts & Sciences.