Dr. Margot van de Weijer and Dr. Chris Hoeboer have been awarded a prestigious Veni grant by the Dutch Research Council. Read more about the laureates of the Veni grant on the website of NWO.
Congratulations Margot and Chris!
Margot van de Weijer
Improving (Genetic) Insight into Depression by Incorporating Women Biology
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common mental disorder characterised by depressed mood and diminished interest/pleasure. Women are diagnosed with MDD almost twice as often as men during the reproductive years, with similar incidence in postmenopausal women and men. Additionally, depressive symptoms are common among women experiencing hormonal change, especially during the premenstrual, postpartum, and perimenopausal period. This suggests reproductive hormones play an important role in MDD. Yet, hormonal biology is rarely integrated in genetic and etiological studies of MDD.
In this project ‘Improving (Genetic) Insight into Depression by Incorporating Women Biology’, Van de Weijer will investigate whether differences in reproductive hormones (e.g., oestradiol) and women-specific factors (related to reproduction and the menstrual cycle) help explain these differences. Using advanced genetic methods, the research will:
- Improve genetic research on oestradiol in order to identify genetic factors influencing individual differences in this hormone in women,
- Examine how variation in oestradiol relates to depression in women and men,
- Conduct the first genome-wide study of premenstrual mood to identify genetic markers influencing susceptibility to premenstrual mood problems.
Together, the project will generate new insights and tools to better study sex-specific mechanisms underlying mental health and other health conditions.
Chris Hoeboer
BigData4Change
Although treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are often effective, around 40% of patients do not respond to treatment. Why therapy works well for some people but not for others is still insufficiently understood. To help close this gap, dr. Chris Hoeboer has been awarded a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council for his project BigData4Change: Using session data to understand, predict and facilitate change during PTSD treatment.
In BigData4Change, Hoeboer will bring together international treatment session data from guideline‑based PTSD therapies. He will do this by creating the first large‑scale PTSD session dataset with more than 10,000 sessions. Using advanced dynamic modelling and machine‑learning approaches, he will study how change unfolds during treatment, which mechanisms drive improvement, and for whom treatments work or fail to work.
The project consists of three work packages. First, Hoeboer will identify mechanisms of change in trauma‑focused treatments and examine how they are moderated by patient characteristics. Next, he will combine these mechanisms with early symptom change. The aim is to predict, early in treatment, who is likely to benefit and who is at risk of non‑response or worsening symptoms. Finally, he will test whether actively enhancing key mechanisms of change can improve treatment outcomes in a randomized trial. By comparing regular treatment with an enhanced version in which these mechanisms are boosted.
Beyond scientific impact, BigData4Change is explicitly geared towards clinical and societal application. The project will lay the groundwork for data‑driven tools to monitor treatment progress and support timely treatment adaptations, reducing unnecessary treatment burden and improving shared decision‑making between clinicians and patients.