Tessa J. Roseboom

The AMC is one of the most prominent medical centers in the Netherlands with a leading position in medical research, both nationally and internationally. Tessa Roseboom is one of the AMC´s Principal Investigators leading the Fetal Origins Research group within the Academic Medical Center. She obtained funding from the Dutch Heart Foundation, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Resaerch, The European Science Foundation (Eurostress Program), Medical Resaerch Courncil and the Diabetes Fund with a volume of nearly 1 million Euros. She established the healthy WOMB study center to investigate the role of various influences during early human development on later health.

She has long standing experience in studying the early origins of later disease. She has worked on the Dutch famine birth cohort study for the past 15 years, and has led that study during the past 10 years. This cohort consists of 2.414 singletons who were born around the time of the Dutch famine in 1944-45. The cohort has been followed up extensively, focussing not only on metabolic and cardiovascular disease, but also on psychiatric diseases, infections, wellbeing, and certain types of cancer. She was the first to demonstrate that undernutrition during gestation in humans is associated with a doubled rate of heart disease, and of late, she also found suggestions of earlier brain ageing. She has been involved in investigateing research into gene environmental interactions, transgenerational effects, and outcome on reproductive succcess and epigenetic mechanisms.