Annette Bakker, a PhD in Biochemistry, has leadership experience in both the academic and pharma/biotech research enterprise across Europe, and in the USA. Intrigued by the observation that the path from great basic discoveries to equally great clinical benefit is bumpy and often inefficient, she joined the Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF) in order to try to smoothen this path for neurofibromatosis (NF), a rare genetic disorder. The team, focused on ‘connecting the unconnected’, has built worldwide patient-centric collaborative research and clinic networks, a patient registry, a data portal, to name a few.

Annette feels very strongly about the unique niche role of disease foundations in the R&D ecosystem and involving the patient voice in every initiative. CTF sees patients as partners.  In 2018, CTF Europe was launched and she is acting vice-chair of the organisation. The global CTF enterprises are aimed at not only benefiting patients with NF but acting as a blueprint to accelerate drug discovery and development in the larger rare disease community.