Annette van der Helm is professor in Rheumatology, in particular early arthritis. She works as internist, rheumatologist at the department of rheumatology of the Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. She is also appointed as professor to the department of rheumatology of the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She received several prizes and personal grants on the national (among which NWO Vidi and ‘Klinisch Fellow’ grant) en international level (ERC Starting Grant).

More information about Annette van der Helm-van Mil

Annette van der Helm is professor in Rheumatology, in particular early arthritis. She works as internist, rheumatologist at the department of rheumatology of the Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands. She is also appointed as professor to the department of rheumatology of the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She received several prizes and personal grants on the national (among which NWO Vidi and ‘Klinisch Fellow’ grant) en international level (ERC Starting Grant).

Research

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease that results in joint pain, disability and limitations at work. Currently, severe joint destruction can be prevented by early and powerful medications. However RA is still a chronic disease and patients require lifelong disease suppressive medication.

The work of Van der Helm is aimed at preventing the chronic disease phase of RA or shortening the disease duration. The earliest phases of disease development, in particular the phase preceding the occurrence of clinically evident arthritis, is crucial to achieve this aim, as the disease is already chronic at the time of diagnosis. However, the biologic processes in the pre-arthritis phases are not yet ‘matured’ and therefore more susceptible to permanent disease modification. Ideally, treatment is started at the stage that precedes the clinical disease so that it prevents its development, and thus prevents chronicity. To achieve this aim clinical, imaging and laboratory studies are being done to understand the mechanisms underlying the development of RA, to identify targets for prevention, and to stratify the risk of developing RA.

Allowing early access to rheumatologic care is crucial and several clinics and tools have been developed to ascertain this at both local and (inter)national level. Van der Helm also supervises a region-wide proof-of-concept trial that studies whether chronic arthritis and RA can be prevented by very early treatment in initiated in the disease phase of arthralgia.

In sum the research is aimed at early access to medical care, timely diagnosis and very early personalized intervention, aiming at precision prevention.

Academic career

Annette van der Helm-van Mil started studying Medicine at the University of Leiden in 1993 and obtained her medical degree in 1998 (cum laude). In 2005 she got her qualification as internist and in 2006 she was ratified as rheumatologist.

She obtained her Ph.D. degree in 2006 (cum laude) on the thesis "Genetics, Autoantibodies and Clinical Features in Understanding and Predicting Rheumatoid Arthritis“ at the Leiden University (promotor prof F. Breedveld).

Since 2006 she is appointed at the department of Rheumatology of the LUMC. She was head of the outpatient clinic from 2006 till 2015. In November 2015 she was appointed as professor at the department of Rheumatology at the LUMC and also the EMC. The title of her inaugural lecture, held at Oct 14, 2016, was  ‘the changing phenotype of RA’.

Currently she is supervising the Leiden Early Arthritis Cohort, the Clinically Suspect Arthralgia cohort and the TREAT EARLIER trial, the latter two projects are being rolled across the south-west part of the Netherlands, from the LUMC and EMC.

Her research line on early arthritis in the LUMC and EMC is acknowledged as a Research Center of Excellence by the Dutch Arthritis Society (2018-2023).

She is associate editor of RMD Open, published >300 peer reviewed articles (among which >160 last authorships), and authored >11 textbook chapters. Van der Helm is active in several taskforces from the European League against Rheumatism (EULAR). She supervised the development of the EULAR definition of arthralgia suspicious for progression to RA and is intimately involved in several European consortia and EU funded programs (FP6, FP7, IMI). She was the primary supervision of 18 PhD students who defended their thesis (17 LUMC, 1 EMC).

Prizes and honourable appointments

Van der Helm received the EULAR Young Investigator award, the Prof.dr Goslingsprize (prize for best scientific research of the Dutch society of rheumatology), and  the Marie-Parijs prize (research prize from the Leiden University). In addition to project grants from the Dutch Arthritis Foundation and NWO, she received several personal grants, among which a Klinisch Fellow grant of NWO (2007), a Vidi grant of NOW (2012), and ERC Starting Grant (2016).

Publications