Sophie Wintermans obtained her BSc and MSc in Molecular Life Sciences from Wageningen University & Research (Wageningen, the Netherlands). There, she specialized in both organic chemistry and biochemistry, with a focus on early drug development. During an internship with Symeres (Nijmegen, the Netherlands), she synthesized cyclin dependent kinase inhibitors for developing new anti-cancer drugs. During her MSc thesis with Dr. Bauke Albada, she worked with DNA catalysts called nucleoapzymes to selectively modify tyrosine residues in an enzyme-like fashion, which can be used as a tool for e.g., bioconjugation of drugs to antibodies. She then joined the Medical Biochemistry lab (Leiden University, the Netherlands) as a PhD candidate under the supervision of Dr. Marta Artola and Dr. René Olsthoorn to develop new small-molecule drugs targeting RNA pseudoknots. For this, she developed a novel high throughput assay to screen for potential RNA-binding molecules, which can now be applied to different RNA structures in hopes of finding new antimicrobial compounds.

Publications