Dana Vergoossen awarded for "Best article 2021"

In December, Dana Vergoossen received from the Prinses Beatrix Spierfonds the prestigious award for young Dutch neuromuscular researchers. She was awarded for her paper, published in PNAS (30 March 2021), describing pioneering work in the field of IgG4 antibodies. The prize consists of a cash prize of 1000.

Vergoossen is a PhD student at the Department of Human Genetics (LUMC) and her research focuses on muscle disease myasthenia gravis, in particular MuSK myasthenia gravis. This muscle disease belongs to the growing group of autoimmune diseases characterized by pathogenic IgG4 autoantibodies. In the winning article she describes a new disease mechanism showing that functional monovalence of autoantibodies significantly enhances the pathogenicity of IgG4 autoantibodies.

Functional monovalency amplifies the pathogenicity of anti-MuSK IgG4 in myasthenia gravis, Dana L. E. Vergoossen, Jaap J. Plomp, Christoph Gstöttner, Yvonne E. Fillié-Grijpma, Roy Augustinus, Robyn Verpalen, Manfred Wuhrer, Paul W. H. I. Parren, Elena Dominguez-Vega, Silvère M. van der Maarel, Jan J. Verschuuren, Maartje G. Huijbers, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2021, 118 (13) e2020635118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2020635118