Our Team Joins Wellcome Leap’s VISIBLE Programme!

We are excited to share that our team has been selected to participate in the prestigious VISIBLE programme of Wellcome Leap.

VISIBLE (Women’s Heart Disease Revealed) is an ambitious international initiative focused on transforming the diagnosis and treatment of coronary microvascular disease (CMD) in women. Despite affecting millions of women worldwide, conditions such as ANOCA (Angina with Non-Obstructive Coronary Arteries) and CMD remain underdiagnosed, often resulting in years of unexplained symptoms, repeated hospital visits, and delayed treatment.

As part of this exciting programme, our team, including Dr. Tim Sakkers, Prof. Dr. Hester den Ruijter, Dr. Ernest Diez Benavente, and Dr. Tim van de Hoef, will work on developing a novel blood-based diagnostic test for patients with ANOCA and CMD. Our goal is to provide clinicians with a scalable and minimally invasive tool that can help identify these patients earlier and more accurately. By developing a scalable and minimally invasive diagnostic approach, we aim to enable earlier and more accurate diagnosis, ultimately improving care and outcomes for women with heart disease.

Being selected for the VISIBLE programme marks an important milestone for our team and strongly reflects the mission of CVD in Women: advancing sex-specific cardiovascular research and accelerating innovations that improve women’s cardiovascular health.

We are honoured to be part of this international consortium and look forward to working together with partners across the globe to improve the lives of women with cardiovascular disease.

We would also like to acknowledge the early trust and support from the Dutch CardioVascular Alliance, EQT Foundation, Utrecht Holdings, the European Research Council, and Faculty of Impact, which have helped make this work possible.

Want to read more about the Leap’s VISIBLE Programme?
→ https://wellcomeleap.org/visible/