Submitted by J. Grosse on Mon, 02/03/2026 - 13:08
We are delighted to congratulate to Dr Anton Venhuizen, a postdoc in the Gammons lab at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR) who has recently been awarded a highly competitive and prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship Award to continue their work understanding rare genetic diseases.
There are more than 7,000 known rare diseases, affecting over 300 million people worldwide, and many are linked to problems in how cells communicate with one another. One important example is the WNT signalling pathway, an ancient and highly conserved communication system that helps control how cells develop, specialise, and build tissues. When this pathway is disrupted, it can lead to a wide range of rare diseases.
One such condition is Robinow syndrome, a rare genetic disorder characterised by skeletal abnormalities and distinctive craniofacial features. Patients with Robinow syndrome carry mutations in components of a branch of the WNT pathway known as WNT/ROR signalling. This signalling pathway has also been implicated in cancer spread and several neurological disorders. Despite its importance, we still do not fully understand how WNT/ROR signals are passed from one cell to another, or how these processes go wrong in disease.
In this Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship, Anton will address these questions by investigating how WNT/ROR signalling works at the molecular level and how it is altered in disease. By improving our understanding of this pathway, the project could support better diagnosis and understanding of Robinow syndrome, while also informing future approaches to diseases such as cancer.
Dr Melissa Gammons, the PI on the project said “Anton is an incredibly deserving recipient of this award, which will not only support our research but also his personal development into a future research leader. I have no doubt he will make the most of this fantastic opportunity and we are extremely grateful to the European commission/European Research Executive Agency, those involved in the review and selection process and the CIMR for supporting this application.”