Henne Holstege’s interest in healthy aging and cognitive decline was sparked by the remarkably healthy brain of Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, who passed away at 115 years old. When she was 112, van Andel-Schipper called the University Medical Center in Groningen to let them know that she had agreed to donate her body to science after she’d died. Gert Holstege, Henne’s father, was responsible for bodies donated to science. He was intrigued by her call, and went to visit and examine van Andel-Schipper and found her (and her brain) to be in top shape. When she passed away a few years later, her brain was donated to science. It turned out to be comparable to that of a typical 60-year-old! What made her brain so uniquely resistant to the usual aging and disease processes that affect so many seniors? Henne Holstege just had to find out. She switched from studying breast cancer genetics to exploring the unique genetic features of people who grow extraordinarily old.

Henne Holstege joined the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Neuroscience as a group leader in November 2024. She will maintain her ongoing cohort studies in the Netherlands, working 50% at UMC Amsterdam and 50% at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research. Her aim in Leuven is to focus on advancing functional studies, pursuing large-scale omics data generation with the biomaterials from the centenarians, and performing downstream functional experiments, further leveraging the rich data source she has built over the years with the 100-Plus Study in Amsterdam.