Dr. Datson serves as Chief Scientific Officer of VICO and is responsible for discovery and non-clinical drug development. She has over twenty years of experience in preclinical research in both academia and industry. Prior to joining VICO, she served as Senior Director Drug Discovery and Early Preclinical Development at BioMarin Nederland B.V. from 2015-2019. Previously she was head of preclinical development at Prosensa Therapeutics B.V. developing antisense oligonucleotide-based therapies from 2013-2015.
She has a strong background in molecular neuroscience and was member of the international Huntington’s Disease Collaborative Research Group that cloned the gene for Huntington’s Disease (HD) in 1993.
She obtained her PhD in molecular genetics from Leiden University, The Netherlands and held research staff positions as assistant professor at the Department of Medical Pharmacology and Human Genetics at Leiden University and Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) from 2005-2013. During her academic career she obtained several prestigious research grants and headed a research group in the field of molecular neuroscience, focussing on identification of genes and pathways controlled by stress hormones in the brain as potential drug targets for treatment of stress-related brain disorders. She is the author of over 70 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals in the field of molecular genetics, molecular biology and molecular neuroscience and RNA modulation.