Dr. Terry Jo V. Bichell

Terry Jo Vetters Bichell worked primarily as a public health nurse-midwife until her youngest child, Lou, was diagnosed with Angelman syndrome in 2000. She quickly switched focus to move bench research into the first clinical trials for Angelman syndrome and to help design natural history studies. Dr. Bichell earned a PhD in neuroscience from Vanderbilt University in 2016, studying gene-environment interactions in Huntington’s disease rodent models. She was the founding director of the A-BOM Alliance from 2016-2018. In 2019, Dr. Bichell launched COMBINEDBrain, a pre-competitive consortium of patient advocacy organizations, working to identify outcome measures and biomarkers for rare genetic neurodevelopmental disorders. She is the Vice Chair of the Tennessee Rare Disease Advisory Council and teaches a course in Translational Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University. As a parent, Terry Jo has been alongside her son Lou many times, as he has participated in clinical trials in the search for a treatment for Angelman syndrome.