Dr. Maaike van Putten

Assistant professor in the DMD Genetic Therapy Group

Netherlands

Dr. Maaike van Putten is an assistant professor in the DMD Genetic Therapy Group at the Department of Human Genetics of the Leiden University Medical Center. She has long lasting experience in preclinical studies with DMD mouse models. Her research focusses on skeletal muscle and heart function and pathology and the potential of treatments targeting the primary and/or secondary pathology of DMD. During her PhD-studies, she showed that minute amounts of dystrophin can have a positive impact on muscle function and, ultimately, survival of mice (2007-2013). More recently, her research focus expanded to study the function of dystrophin in the brain and the consequences of dystrophinopathy on behavior and brain pathology.

Dr. van Putten has published >50 articles and presented her work at international conferences and workshops for which she obtained numerous awards. She successfully applied for several grants, amongst which a prestigious VIDI award (€800,000) from the Dutch government in 2020. She is an active reviewer for numerous journals and funding agencies, and serves on the editorial board of Disease Models & Mechanisms. She is a member of the TREAT-NMD working group for standard operating procedures to test the effects of new treatments in animal models for DMD (since 2007), and a member of the Animal Welfare Body of the LUMC.