Christianne Buskens graduated as a medical doctor in 1999. From 2000 until 2003 she worked as a research fellow at the department of surgery, and the department of experimental oncology at the Academic Medical Centre (AMC) in Amsterdam. This resulted in her PhD thesis ´The development of new treatment strategies for oesophageal cancer’, which she defended with distinction in 2004. She was trained as a surgeon from 2003 until 2009 at the AMC, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital (Amsterdam), and Gelre Hospitals (Apeldoorn). After completion of her surgical training, she was granted a fellowship from the Dutch Cancer Organization (KWF) at the department of colorectal surgery in Oxford, United Kingdom. Here, she specialized in proctology and minimally invasive surgery. To combine clinical work with (translational) research work, she completed a masters program in clinical epidemiology.

In January 2012, she became a staff member of the AMC colorectal surgeons group. Here, her field of interest changed from oncology to IBD. Today, she is a specialized IBD-surgeon treating this fascinating disease in all its complexity, in a multidisciplinary setting. She combines her clinical work with translational research which is funded by an innovative research incentive grant from The Netherlands organisation for health research and development. This grant enables her to spend dedicated research time in the laboratory, and was the basis for some ongoing translational IBD research lines: the role of the mesentery in Crohn’s disease, the role of the appendix in ulcerative colitis, and the fundamental characterization of perianal fistulas in Crohn’s patients.