On 20 January 2026, Sophie Mastenbroek successfully defended her PhD thesis entitled “Divergent paths: Unraveling heterogeneity in Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body disease” at Amsterdam UMC and was awarded Cum Laude for her outstanding scientific contribution!

The papers presented in this thesis aimed to advance the understanding of biological heterogeneity in several age-related dementias, with a particular focus on Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body disease, and to characterise the clinical phenotypes associated with these variations. In Chapter 1 “Continuous β-amyloid CSF/PET imbalance model to capture Alzheimer disease heterogeneity”, data from the AMYPAD Prognostic and Natural History Study was used.

Sophie conducted her research under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Frederik Barkhof and Dr. Rik Ossenkoppele, with co-supervision from Dr. Lyduine Collij and Prof. Dr. Oskar Hansson. A special note of appreciation goes to the thesis committee: Prof. Dr. Charlotte Teunissen, Prof. Dr. Michael Schöll, Prof. Dr. David Cash, Dr. Evelien Lemstra, and Dr. Daniel Ferreira Padilla for their insightful discussions!

We extend our warmest congratulations to Sophie on this remarkable achievement and wish her continued success in the exciting journey ahead!

Read her full PhD thesis here: https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/divergent-paths-unraveling-heterogeneity-in-alzheimers-disease-an/